Eisley
by SaintAugustana
Summary: My name is Eisley Monahan, and I am not a vampire.
1. Author's Note

This story mostly takes place post-series, four years after Eclipse. A disclaimer: I have _not _read Breaking Dawn, and therefore cannot attest to anything that happened within those pages. If my fanfiction clashes with Breaking Dawn, it is because I _have not read it._ I will, eventually. I'm just too lazy to go to the library.

I said this story _mostly _takes place post-series. It actually begins _during_ Eclipse, opening on my protagonists in Seattle, during the period when Victoria and her newborns ravaged the city on a killing spree. Meanwhile, as you probably know, The Cullens and the Quileutes are training for battle in anticipation of Victoria's arrival in Forks.

Four years pass, and the plot begins to unfold. You'll receive cues from me, if you're paying attention, so you don't get lost in a time warp. It's a little confusing at the beginning, but straightens out toward the end.

All in all, this story serves as the pilot piece for my own Twilight fanfiction series based on the adventures of Eisley Monahan, whom you will come to know more deeply when you read.

Again, as I have already stated, I have not read Breaking Dawn, but I assume the following things happened: Edward and Bella were married, and Bella became a vampire. She now lives with the Cullens.

Any questions? Feel free to ask them in a review of this 'chapter,' and I will be sure to reply with at-least-half-decent answers. (Kidding – wholly-decent answers.)

Enjoy!

_That's the beautiful thing about being human. Things change._

- Edward Cullen_, _Twilight, pg. 478


	2. Prologue

My name is Eisley Monahan, and I am not a vampire.

-----------

Diary,

Edward seems more anxious every day about the Seattle killings. He thought a newborn vampire (which are really dangerous, apparently) is behind the crimes, but after my room was broken into, I'm not so sure. If Victoria returns for me, I know he will protect me, or do what he can, but I will surrender my life in a heartbeat if it means protecting him and his family. This is all my fault.

On a different note, I need to keep myself awake. Edward will be back soon to take me along with him to the meeting in the forest clearing. Jacob said he'd be there. Alice says they will train themselves to kill whatever ravenous vampires are on their way to Forks.

He's here.

- Bella Swan, 05-13-07

------------

Case File:_ Caine Monahan, age 11_

Evaluator: _Andrea Lincoln, Social Worker c/o Chicago Orphanage, Chicago, Illinois_

Subject Background: _Orphan of four years. Biological mother and father died in a fire that destroyed their home in Lincoln Park, Chicago. One sister, Eisley Monahan, age 7, also living at the Chicago Orphanage. _

Evaluation: _Caine has not responded well to placement with a foster family, but has expressed his desire to stay with his sister should any placement become permanent. _

Behavior:_ Caine is headstrong and impudent – respectful of superiors, but uncaring. He acts according to his own needs and desires, displaying no qualities of admiration or responsibility except in his overprotection of his sister, whom he guards constantly, as a lion might guard its prey from other lions. However, psychological evaluations note that, despite his young pre-pubescent age, Caine's paternal complex may have been triggered by the death of his parents. _

Criminal Record: _None. _

Other Notes: _Foster family No. 14, the Hillmonts, was terminated from the roster after the subject returned from their custody displaying marks of physical abuse. _

_----------_

"This batch is growing weaker by the day, my love," Victoria crooned in Riley's ear.

"I will destroy them," he whispered obediently, eliciting a little smile from the beautiful woman he was sure he'd adore forever.

"I will hunt, and return with more," she mused, "a few more hours in the city for them to feed, to feel the taste of human blood, and we will go to Forks, to exact my revenge, and then, my love, we will be together."

"As you wish, sweet Victoria," Riley mumbled, leaning in to her fiery hair.

In a flash, she was gone. Riley called forth the first of the newborns, preparing for the kill.


	3. Leftovers

We became homeless when Caine decided he'd had enough of foster families and orphanages and smog.

I was seven when we ran away from Chicago, and kept running until we could breathe, until our lungs suddenly decompressed and inflated with the clean Seattle air. Miles and miles.

When I was nine years old, I burned my fingers getting too close to the candle adorning my brother's birthday cake, his thirteenth. We were celebrating privately, just the two of us and that cake, vanilla, fresh out of the oven (he stole it from the bakery shortly after it was placed on the counter for sale). I can remember the soggy smell of the cardboard box we sat in, and the bittersweet taste of the lard icing lubricating the pieces we sent slipping down our raw throats with dirty fingers. From our hidden alley, in a bustling shopping district in Seattle, Washington, we kept out of everyone's way for two years.

I had never considered life without my brother, and I doubt he'd ever considered life without me, his one source of control in the world: I would follow him anywhere and everywhere, and he would shield me from everything, everything.

I learned too late that 'everything' encompassed more than he could ever _dream_ of protecting me from.

---

"Have you seen the newspaper?"

"No, Caine. Why?" I responded distantly. I had my back to a dumpster, and was busy tinkering with a tape recorder.

"Because I wanted to read it," he mumbled, clambering through our little hut of cardboard boxes in rabid search of the thing. "Come on, help me look," he ordered, pacing over to my hunched form and snatching the recorder out of my sweaty fingers.

"Awww, Caine, just go filch one or somethin,'" I protested.

"We don't steal unless we need to, and I know I had today's paper here somewhere, already," he rebuked gently.

_Uh-oh_. Suddenly I remembered where I had put the dreaded thing.

"Uh, Caine?"

"Yeah?" He continued poking around.

"Is today May the fourteenth?"

"I think so," he called back.

I shuffled over to the little box in which I had placed the leftovers of my brother's birthday cake, after wrapping them up, of course, in today's newspaper.

"I found it," I announced, pointing to the obnoxious lump, greasy with icing.

He bustled over, relieved for moment, then dismayed. "Eisleeeeeeey," he scolded. "When I said to put the cake away I didn't mean in today's _paper._" He reached a hand down and tried to peel the newsprint back, but the goopy vanilla had it all smushed together.

"How could I know it was today's paper and not yesterday's?" I mumbled under my breath, making sure he couldn't hear me. We both knew the answer – I couldn't read, and I almost, _almost_ resented him for it, for taking me away from the orphanage right when they would have set me down to learning books and newspapers and magazines and all those wordy things. But only _almost_. I liked being with him. As long as we were together, he said, we'd be alright.

He heard me, anyway.

"I promise, Eisley, I will teach you how to read, sometime. Okay?"

"Okay," I nodded. He hugged me quickly and picked up a jacket from the ground near his feet.

"I'll be back with another paper soon," he yelled back from the alley exit. "Stay here, alright?"

"But I wanted to go find another song!"

"Stay _here,_" he repeated, tugging his arms into the sleeves. "I mean it." His tone became abruptly solemn, almost anxious, as if he knew something I didn't, something I didn't want to know.

"Fine," I replied obediently, catching the tape recorder as he tossed it back, and watching him disappear into the dusk. I looked up at the sky, a splash of purples and oranges. Twilight.


	4. Rain

For a fleeting moment, I wondered where everyone had gone. It was Friday night, and this was downtown Seattle. I ambled along Seneca toward 4th Street, all lit up with streetlamps and the windows from various designer stores. Any other day, I'd have been extremely out-of-place, dressed in dirty shorts and a t-shirt, a crow among throngs of well-dressed, well-to-do, well-behaved tourists and shoppers and citydwellers, but there was no one around.

After about fifteen minutes of hanging out in our alley, I became bored and decided to go and look for my song.

That was my hobby. The outdoor mall was always playing the latest tunes on their intercom radio, and every few days Caine would lead me to a loudspeaker, put me on his shoulders, and I would record the smash hit, raising my tape player to the sky in my hands.

There was no music today. The loudspeakers were off, deadened, ominous poles in the empty shadows of the block.

More confused than frightened by the absence of intelligent human life, I pivoted and headed back down the block, cars whizzing by on the pavement, growing slick with a drizzle of rain beginning to fall.

I ran, the soles of my worn trainers slapping against the concrete path back to our cardboard hut.

Caine hadn't arrived back yet. I stumbled into the biggest box, sagging with the weight of water, and carefully unwrapped my priceless device from the fabric of my shirt. It was damp, but safe. I jiggled the switch, popped open the cassette holder, and flipped the tape over, pressing play.

"Bruised" by Jack's Mannequin began to choke it's way out of a plastic-coated sound system and I sung along quietly for a minute or two, waiting. Three songs later, and he still hadn't returned.

_How long does it take to steal a newspaper?_

I crawled out of the shadows and made my way through the alleyway maze toward the streetfront.

I could not see my brother.

"CAI-omph!" I started to shout his name, but something wet and heavy collided with my body and a hand slapped over my mouth. Instinctively, I screamed into the warm flesh, but Caine's ever-soothing, albeit frantic, whisper drifted into my ear.

"Sssshhsh, Eisley, quiet! It's me, it's me."

I quit squirming, and he released me, slowly.

"What's going o-"

A high-pitched scream resonated in the darkness, but behind the shroud of rain my visibility was zip.

"Come on," he commanded, eyes wide, tugging me along as we rushed through the labyrinth and threw ourselves into our cardboard beds. I sputtered, rainwater dripping down my face and running up my nose. Caine reached up quickly with a knot of his shirt and cleaned my face. I had never seen him so frightened. His breath was shaky, rattled, heavy.

A chill blasted through the alley, carried a new wave of if-possibly-heavier rain our way with it. He held me close, and we hunkered down together, feeding off each other's body warmth.

"What was that?" I whispered cautiously.

I felt his adam's apple sink. "I don't know," he whispered back, in that same solemnly anxious tone, like he knew something I didn't.


	5. Numbers

Caine never recovered from that night, it seemed, as he grew more restless and antsy by the day, for the first time _unhappy_ with our living situation, hinting that we might should move out of the city. _Hinting_ at it, as if it were my decision to make.

"Whatever you say, Caine," I would reply, but it didn't satiate him. He only went out for food in the early hours of the afternoon, and only when we needed it, and would not take his eyes off me after nightfall.

---

"Caine?"

"Yeah, Eisley?"

"I just ate the last peach," I held up the core for him to see, swallowing the last chunk of the juicy fruit. "I'm still hungry."

"Can it wait until tomorrow? It's almost dark," he muttered as he rearranged our box house.

"But I'm _hungry_. It's not quite dark yet. Why does it matter if it's dark, anyway? Come on, Caine, _please_?" I begged bouncing up and down on my toes, pulling on his hood.

He sighed heavily, trying to be nonchalant. "Are there still leftovers from the cake?"

"We've had that cake for days now-"

"It's still good, though, isn't it?"

I scowled and fetched it, still wrapped in May the fourteenth's headlines. It was rock hard when I opened it.

"Happy thirteenth birthday to me," he muttered. "Okay. I'll be back in five minutes, _five_ minutes, okay?"

"Okay." I grinned, kissing him on the cheek and handing him his coat.

He ruffled my cropped hair and turned away, disappearing between the dumpster tunnel to the street.

I tossed the cake in the nearest rubbish bin, letting the metal lid fall open with a clatter and the cake fall in with an unpleasant thump. The newspaper fluttered apart as it descended, and I glanced briefly at the headline. It might as well have been written in a foreign language.

**DEATH TOLL ON THE RISE IN RANDOM SERIAL KILLINGS.**

"Eisley?"

Caine's echoed voice took my by surprise. "Forget something?"  
"Just to tell you to stay here, okay?"

"Sure, big brother," I nodded. "Hurry up, I'm hungry."

"I'm hurrying," he replied quickly. "Five minutes, okay?"

"Okay, jeez, just go!" I laughed.

I would not see Caine again until the spring of _my_ thirteenth year, the year my life ended.


	6. Lost

Days, weeks, then months passed. I waited for my brother, but as time stretched onward between his five-minute promise and the threefourfive-month reality, I gradually accepted that he wasn't coming back. For the first time, I ventured into the city alone, truly alone, and I discovered completely new _worlds._

I quickly tuned into the chatter of the local Washingtonians in efforts to keep up with the times. I became a proficient thief, ravaging produce from street vendors, clothes from port side shops, and reading material from paperboys' bags.

My cognitive abilities swelled as rapidly as my city-savvy ego, and by the time I was twelve, I'd learned to read well-enough to process the gist of newspaper stories and magazine articles. I kept away from books: I found their thickly bound pages intimidating and unnecessary.

All in all, I did well enough, as far as homelessness goes.

I kept to the alleyway, small though it was, and dirty, it was still ours, or so I considered it.

By pushing two dumpsters close to each other and setting up a cardboard overhang I dramatically improved the practicality of the hut, and used the extra boxes to store everything I'd collected on five-finger discount, and the rustic tape recorder, lost somewhere at the bottom of the smallest box.

One typically cloudy day, I awoke at the typical 8:30 hour to the typical sound of the school bus which typically picked up typical kids from the corner near my alley. My alarm.

I dressed quickly, in decent jeans, shirt, and jacket, ate a quick breakfast of ham and eggs over-easied on a small pan I heated over a can fire, and paced out into the dull, chilly sunlight.

Today, May the fourteenth, Caine's birthday, would be the day I confirmed my suspicions about his disappearance.

I headed for the library, breezed quietly through it's double doors, and took the stairs to the second floor, where the microfilm machine awaited my arrival.

To my dismay, I didn't have a clue where to start looking for answers. Hundreds of newspapers had been issued since my brother's disappearance back in 2007, and who could say which of their horror stories might explain it? I had limited knowledge of that year – I couldn't read then.

I slumped in my chair, glancing around the library.

_Eisley? Have you seen the newspaper?_

I sat bolt upright. The flashback ensued.

_"May the fourteenth."_ I whispered under my breath. _The one day Caine was desperate to read the news. Why?_

I saw his solemnly anxious expression. _He knew something I didn't_.

I adjusted the dials on the machine to that date, 2007, and began flipping through swarms of papers.

**DEATH TOLL ON THE RISE. POLICE FEAR GANG ACTIVITY. **

**RANDOM SERIAL KILLINGS KEEP SEATTLE'S DOORS LOCKED. **

**GUN SALES INCREASE DRAMATICALLY. **

Against my better judgment, I printed what I could, until a bookish librarian told me I needed to start paying a dime per five sheets. I apologized and handed her a few quarters from my pocket, telling her to keep the change. She humphed and skittered away, counting the coins.

I skipped ahead a few months.

**END OF KILLING SPREE?**

**NO MORE BODIES FOUND IN THREE MONTHS. **

**POLICE HAVE ISSUED FINAL REPORT ON THE NIGHTTIME SLAYINGS.**

I snatched my printed papers from the outdated copy machine, stuffed them into my jacket, and fled home.

A few hours later found me in the hut between the dumpsters, surrounded by papers covered top-to-bottom in words, words, words. I munched on an apple and sipped soda as I flipped through the, learning the story.

It seemed suspicious. Not that the killings _couldn't_ have been committed by a gang or gang member, but that no arrests had actually been made. Or just not announced? Why would the police want to keep that a secret?

Maybe they didn't know, either.

I came to the last page. A dog, half-dozing across the way from me, whined pitifully.

Twenty, maybe thirty photos of people gazed up at me from the article. People of both genders and all ages, colors, races, and expressions. Obituaries – specifically, victims of the 'death spree.'

I lowered my apple to the ground and tried to ignore the leaden feeling in my gut as I scanned the faces. I only needed one, just one, to know me, and my mind would be at ease, at least, in my acknowledgement he was, in fact, _dead_, and not just gone.

I found my brother, third from the left on the last row of faces.

_Caine Monahan_, _13. _

That strange wave of relief washed over my mind, but of course, failed to extinguish the fire ignited in my core, and I told myself, _Eisley, he is dead. Caine is dead. _

Caine was dead.

The dog whined again, startling me. I hadn't heard him approach, but approach he did, sniffing warily at my half-gobbled apple.

"Take it," I whispered dejectedly. "I'm not hungry anymore."

---------

My birthday came and went without my notice. I went about my regular schedule, not once stopping to comprehend that I was now going on fourteen, and my brother was perpetually thirteen. His death was like a rock tied to my ankle, something I couldn't shake.

Speaking of things I couldn't shake, that damn dog kept on my trail everywhere I went, despite my attempts to shoo it, run away from it, or curse it. After a couple of weeks I gave up and let it go about it's business going about my business.

On a rare sunny day, I swept some crumpled bills out of a metal tin and treated myself to an ice cream sundae at the creamery a couple blocks down, settling in at a small metal table on the patio with a copy of Much Ado About Nothing open flat on the tiled surface. All my earlier pretenses about the badness of books had been averted after I'd begun to read and understand Shakespeare, whose complete works was the thickest book I'd ever seen. When the owner of the used bookstore had turned his back, I filched it in order to conquer my fears.

Shakespeare's the only thing I've ever read.

I slurped placidly at my vanilla scoop, wondering when Benedick would finally admit he was in love.

Hamlet dozed at my feet, stretching out his growing limbs, the wind ruffling his pluffy fur. After a bit of creative clean-up and a round of mange medication, I began to consider the hyperactive mutt my own. He provided both excellent company and a distraction from the rock tied to my ankle; eager to begin caring for him, I learned as much as I could about dogs and dog behavior, theorizing that he was some cross between Alaskan Malamute and Australian Shepard.

"Come on, boy," I placed some bills on the table, turned down the corner of my page in Much Ado, and headed off down the block toward the park. He perked up immediately and trotted after me, sensing the direction I was taking as a chance to run and play and be a dog.

He reached Sewell Park before I did, vanishing into the trees with happy barks. I grinned, and followed his yips along the dirt path as they echoed along the walls of massive pines. Leaves crunched beneath us. Hamlet reappeared a few yards away, gazing lopsided at me, tongue lolling out from between pearly white teeth, daring me to chase him.

The sun was beginning to set, but I tucked my book into my jacket pocket and broke into a refreshing run after him, my arms flying out sideways, the wind in my short, brown hair infiltrating every crevice of my coat and making me feel light. Stupidly, I lost track of the trail, sure that the idiot dog wouldn't venture too deep into the labyrinth.

Idiot dog.

"Hamlet!" I called out, whistling through two fingers. "Hamlet!"

It was almost completely dark out.

_Dammit, dammit, dammit._

"HAMLET!"

A barked response reverberated to my left, and the bushes rustled gently. I backed away cautiously, right into a tree.

My idiot dog stumbled out of the brush, and I exhaled a heavy breath. "Come on, boy, we don't have a lot of daylight left." Very little, actually. I turned to head back to the lightest part of the trees, but I didn't hear his footfall behind me.

"Come _on_, Ham-" I pivoted anxiously, just in time to see him collapse, something dark and shiny coating his neck fur. "Hamlet!" I cried, rushing to him. I felt around blindly, looking for the injury, bloodstaining my hands as they rubbed over a wide gash in his shoulder. "Hold on, buddy, hold on," I whispered desperately, looking around for help, any kind of help.

I was hopelessly and irrevocably lost. The sun faded into the ocean horizon miles away, and we were enveloped in darkness. I pulled Hamlet toward a tree trunk and pushed him against the knotted roots, hitting my head on one as I slipped under it and ripped off my jacket. I removed my t-shirt and ripped it into what I hoped were relatively even strips, clogging the cut with one and wrapping the others gingerly around his neck. The evening chill didn't take long to set in, nor did the fear. Acting on adrenaline, my body resisted it for a while, but even after a while, wearing only a thin undershirt and jacket did little against the cold. I curled up against my dog, resting his head on arm, and closed my eyes, unable to sleep.


	7. Wind

Morning could not have come too quickly. The exact moment I heard the first crickets chirping in protest of the rising sun I was up, smashing my head on the overhanging roots of the blasted tree _again_. I recoiled, groaning. Hamlet stirred, sniffing at the damp ground beneath us. With what you'd think was a certain practiced skill, I removed the strips of my shirt from around his neck. They were crusty with dried blood, but seemed to have facilitated some clotting of the cut. It was still open, and deep enough for me to the tip of my index finger into (he snapped at it uncomfortably) but no longer bleeding.

"Come on, up," I enjoined as gently as I could, calmer now that the forest was lit once more with the dull sun. The trees were embellished in the soft blue pallor of early morning cloud cover, the ground dappled with intricate patterns of light, which danced around my feet as the trees swayed and leaves rustled. I paced along slowly, judging the direction by the sun, which rose in the East. Hamlet followed faithfully, limping, and I felt a pang of sympathetic remorse that I wasn't strong enough to carry him. At four-pawed standing height, he almost reached the waistline of my weak and wiry frame.

"Shouldn't be much farther, Ham," I consoled, but my mind was on the pleasant rush of the breeze through the sea of grass and leaves, and the smell of fresh water...

A creek presented itself a few yards to my left, and I smiled, directing my dog toward the clean reservoir. He lapped at it gratefully as I washed my hands and then his wound, and then took a swig or two myself.

Over our ducked heads, a swarm of sparrows vacated a tree in a shower of sound and feathers.

---

The city _different_, somehow, after a traumatizing bout in the forest. It took us until early afternoon to navigate our way back to the alley. I found a rolled up bag of dog chow and poured a small mountain of it onto a slab of cardboard. Hamlet made himself comfortable on his uninjured side, chewing at the stuff, while I dug through my boxes for the first aid kit.

He whined when I dabbed rubbing alcohol in the gash, but I blew gently into the wound to dry the burning liquid and he seemed to calm down. Before I wrapped it in a clean length of gauze, I reclined against the familiar wall of my sanctuary, scrutinizing it for a moment. It was crescent-shaped, like a bitemark, and didn't seem to be scabbing over as it should have been by then. I put this aside – it was possible that all the walking had stressed the injury, keeping it from healing properly.

I wrapped his shoulder in gauze and tied it into a firm not-too-tight knot with my teeth.

"Stupid dog," I grumbled. He cocked his head amusedly.

---

A few days later I was perambulating around the town square in my plain old t-shirt and shorts when I noticed a group of elderly women chatting furtively around a picnic blanket. I shouldn't have pried – looking back on it, I can't imagine what was so interesting about a bunch of geisers talking it up over iced tea and denture-safe delectables, but I inched closer, anyways.

Hamlet tapped my hand impatiently with the frisbee clutched in his jaws, snapping me out of my reverie.

"Oh, sorry," I murmurmed, not really paying attention. I took it and threw it again, as hard as I could.

He yipped and chased after it. I inched closer.

"That's what the police are saying."

"Do you really think it could be the same perpetrator?"

"Or perpetrator_s_, Gwen, remember? The gang?"

"They never proved it was a gang-"

"Oh, but Mary, that's what they said, dear."

"Lily, can you imagine?"

"You know Pat, my cousin, he called me the other day, and oh, he said there's already been a body found-"

"I certainly pray it's not the serial killings again, oh, dear."

At this moment, the one called Gwen looked up and over Mary's shoulder, right at me. I froze, like a deer in the headlights, though, truly, I had done nothing wrong. Hamlet tackled me right then, thank goodness. I snatched the Frisbee and stood up quickly, breaking into a run toward home.

---

"Look at this, Hamlet," I buzzed anxiously, angling my shoulders away from his excited tongue-kisses. I read the article out loud.

**RETURN OF THE NIGHTTIME KILLER? POLICE DISCOVER FOUR NEW BODIES. **

_Medical reports have confirmed that these new victims are recently deceased. Similar modus operandi, analyzed by the Seattle Police Department, suggests the a return of the devious Nighttime Killer(s), as the gang of killers was dubbed back in 2007, when the spree began. _

_Coincidence? Or is it the murderous perpetrators back for another round?_

_Eyewitness reports have indicated..._

I let the paper fall to my lap, wondering why I was so disconcerted. So he (or they) was (or were) back. Why do I care? If I watch my step, keep to the alley during the dark hours, I would be fine. I had Hamlet, and I'd bet he could be a good enough guard dog.

Yeah, it was cool. I'd be fine. It'd be fine. It'll blow over, like last time.

In keeping with my luck, it didn't blow over.


	8. Investigation

I kept up with the headlines, if not _one_ step ahead of everyone else – rising in the early dawn of every morning only out of anxiety for updates; I would race to the newstands just as the daily paper was being delivered in plastic-tied stacks, pay the delivery guy directly, and slice one free with a pocketknife. Why I had any desire to do this, I'll never know. Maybe I wanted to see the bastard(s) caught, or maybe I was clinging to some shred of hope that I'd get some answers out of naïve reporters and clandestine policemen. Sometimes, it would take _days_ for either party to announce something new, but in only a month, the body count was up to seven, slower than last time, most certainly, but still definitive.

I was not religious in any way, but I did pray that the fucker would slip up somewhere, anywhere.

I spent my days at the library, on the Internet, or reading all about criminal procedure and forensic investigation, terms I had never given any catshit about before.

I might have gone crazy if something drastic didn't happen.

Two months passed before the turnaround. They would call it a breakthrough.

----

**NIGHTTIME KILLING SPREE CONTINUES**

_Washington police have identified two more victims of the serial murders that have plagued the city for the last two months. An official report has been issued to the press, in which Chief of Police Grant Broderick states that a "breakthrough lead" has also been made in efforts to apprehend the killer behind these seemingly random and gory crimes. _

_"All of the victims suffered severe blood loss before dying, as well as substantial decay postmortem," said the department medical examiner. "Despite the messy nature of the attacks, no beyond-circumstantial evidence was discovered that might lead to naming a suspect."_

_Reassuring_, I thought, but continued to read.

_Luckily for the scared-stiff residents of Seattle, that has changed. _

_To be issued posthaste in all newspapers this Sunday is a photograph of the suspected murderer, Caine Andrew Monahan, 17. (The police have requested that the public be advised the photo was taken when the suspect was eleven years of age. Facial recognition software has included their rendering of his possible current appearance.) Lincoln was reported missing from the Chicago Orphanage in Chicago, Illinois, approximately seven years ago. Police were informed by orphanage staff that the runaway absconded with another child, a female sibling, Eisley Martel Monahan..._

I hardly caught that last bit. My throat had seized around a gulp of coffee the very nanosecond my brother's name was spelled out in black and white before my eyes, and I coughed violently, gagging on the warm liquid.

When I had my bearings back, I felt the two halves of my conscience engaging in battle with each other. One the one hand, I was incredibly elated to hear he was alive and well. On the other hand, he was obviously alive enough and well enough to make sure that the nine victims thus far were most definitely _not_.

I refused to believe it. They had the wrong guy. Some misunderstanding.

I had to find him, get the truth out of him.

It had been four years.

_Where did you _go, _Caine?_

_---_

Our alley, as I had begun referring to it again, rapidly evolved from homeless pad to command center, out of which I worked my own investigation adjacent to the reporters' and the police force's. In a lucky break, the family in an apartment upstairs was foreclosed upon and the flat repossessed until further payments on the bill could be made. (I overheard an angry wife shouting words I will not repeat at her husband, kids crying.) I raided a delivery of electronics to the local superstore, including a box each of walkie-talkies, sound recorders, and handheld GPSs. I relocated a story above the alley to the tiny one-bedroom apartment via the fire escape ladder, using the front room as my stake-outpost.

I had a decent view of our alley below, and Hamlet was happy enough dozing on the windowsill most the time, like some overgrown cat.

While he busied himself with dreams about frisbees and bird-chasing, I spent hours ducked beneath the window of the police stations, recording any and all conversation they had. When they took lunch breaks or left the room, I slipped between the glass and the sill with my city map, and copied their pinpoints and tracking lines in yellow highlighter, the path of the killer, my brother.

I hid GPS trackers beneath each patrol car, jamming the devices up into the crevice where the oil filters were screwed on. When I couldn't be there, I received live feed from a walkie-talkie placed in the meeting room of the station, which was always on except when I snuck in to change the batteries.

My nights were spent listening and re-listening to my recordings of their conversations, making notes and updating the various maps spread out on the floor of the empty hole of the flat.

When I did attempt to sleep, thoughts of wonder and amazement kept me wide awake, deprived. What if he wasn't alive? What if he_ is _the killer? What if he's with the gang? Is there even a gang?

Sleep became an idea completely foreign to me.

Two weeks into this mess and my map was so tattered with creases, folds, and highlighter marks you'd think it was years and years old. The locations of the kills were so erratic, sometimes clustered, sometimes miles and miles apart... not that the journey couldn't have been made, even on foot, but when one killing happens fifty miles away from another just a few minutes later, things began to fall apart.

The gang theory was looking better and better by the day, but I had a nagging hunch that if multiple people were involved at least _one _of them would have left evidence behind already, alerting the police.

Of course, that didn't help my brother.

I changed my mind more often than a ping-pong ball changes table sides, but the goal was still clear and simple: find Caine.

I sat thinking into the early hours of the morning, until the only light was coming from a flickering lamp outside the window, until I had a fleeting notion I was being watching. My eyes flew to the window, but there was nothing. I shut it quickly, and crushed my paranoid fancies, lying down next to Hamlet and closing my eyes.

Outside the fire escape rattled restlessly. I attributed this to the wind.


	9. Discovery

When I awoke in the morning, it was quiet, and my head wasn't resting on my portably furry pillow, but the cold wooden floor.

"Hamlet?" I whistled, sitting up on my elbows and rolling to a standing position. I cricked my neck in the ascent and groaned, trying to shake the last remnants of sleep from my body.

"Hamlet, come on," I grumbled, stumbling over to check the bathroom. Nope. Kitchen. Nope. Closet-

Hamlet was out, lying on his side, motionless.

"Hamlet!" I gasped, throwing myself to the ground at his side, dragging him out of the dingy, claustrophobic space by his forelegs. "Hamlet, Hamlet!" I hugged his chest frantically, listening for a heartbeat. Out of the corner of my eye something slender glinted in his fur. I sat back, and a crystalline syringe needle dislodged itself from his side and rolled to a stop at my knees.

"I had to be sure he wouldn't attack me."

I spun wildly on my legs, tripping myself. I fell to the floor on my backside, backing up instinctively until I hit the wall, using it to push myself into a standing position.

I knew that voice.

"Caine?" I whispered, trying to steady my breathing.

He turned around slowly, lowering the hood of his black sweatshirt as he did so, revealing my brother exactly as I'd remembered him at thirteen: mussed brown hair, that same look of innocence, a boy bordering on manhood.

"Eisley," he returned sorrowfully.

No, there were differences about him – the way he held himself, I noticed, as I approached tentatively. Like an incredible weight was ever-present on his shoulders. His blue eyes, I thought, appeared golden because of the sun's intrusion into the room, but he stood somberly in the shadows, and as I neared him, I saw that they were certainly amber-colored.

Dark rims held firm beneath them. For a moment I wondered if I was dreaming, or if Caine really was dead and this entity before me was a ghostly echo of the human once carefree and happy, protecting me from the world.

"You killed my dog." It was the only sentence I was about to compose coherently.

"He's not dead."

I approached him, tentatively. Somehow, I had grown to be as tall as he was, which wasn't very tall, I discovered.

"I thought you were dead."

He seemed hesitant to reply to that, and instead of doing so, stared at the floor where the sun's dull rays caught on the wooden boards. He himself stood in the shadows.

"I _was_ dead," he replied brokenly.

---

He seemed strangely anxious, and eager for 'fresh air,' he said. I was reminded of the reason he brought us to this city, and the reminded again of how horrible it had been to us in return.

I gave him a clean pair of jeans and my spare pea coat, and we vacated the cramped apartment for the cloudy skies of Seattle outdoors. He was silent as we paced down the sidewalked path to the lakefront.

I bought a couple of tangerine popsicles from a vendor, watching him out of the corner of my eye as he plopped down in the gentle grass, pulled his knees up, and entwined his hands around them.

He took the ice cream when I presented it to him, and licked at it gingerly.

I admired him silently for a few moments, my mind ablaze with questions, but worried, too, that by bombarding him with them I might scare him off, or end the dream, if I was dreaming.

"You're not dreaming," he murmured. I glanced up, startled, but his auric eyes were on the water, focused.

Maybe it was the typically blue-filtered light of Seattle clouds, but he seemed oddly pale, or maybe it was just that his hair was darker in color.

"Where have you been?" I asked.

He took a diffident bite of his popsicle and shifted his body uncomfortably.

"The police printed your picture in the obituaries four years ago."

"And then again on Sunday," he finished. "Simple answer – they screwed up."

I deposited my popsicle on the ground. I had never really been hungry. "Why would they have any reason to think you were dead, Caine?"

He mimicked my action, pushing the orange treat away from him, and looked at me.

His topaz eyes gleamed, bright and malleable, soft, but hard as flint. I all at once felt _less, less _of a person, a pauper in the presence of something fantastic, otherworldly.

Suddenly, he faltered, tearing his gaze away from mine like a sheet of paper ripped from a notebook. He stood.

"The police are after you, Caine," I assured him, trying to be realistic.

He didn't seem to hear me. "It's not safe to talk here." Or maybe he did.

I stood. "Okay, let's go back to the apartment," I suggested. He was becoming increasingly antsy by the second, in a way that seemed to have been about very abruptly.

I recalled my night spent in the forest, the privacy of being lost.

He nodded suddenly, snapping me out of my reverie. "How far is Sewell Park?"

He was either reading my mind or we just thought alike.

"It's a few miles south of here."

He pivoted, pulling his hood up over his head, and paced off in the direction I pointed.

I followed him.


	10. Tree

**PLEASE NOTE THAT CHAPTER NINE HAS BEEN RE-WRITTEN. **

It wasn't that I didn't feel at least _mostly_ safe in my brother's custody, but we were getting a bit too deep into the forest, and we'd deserted the dirt path at least an hour ago.

"Caine!" I called ahead a few yards to where he was walking.

"Not much farther," he promised, and ducked into some underbrush.

I sighed, but followed him into the grassy abyss. I hadn't expected him to stop, though, and my chest collided with his back, almost tripping me. He crouched to the ground. "Sorry."

"Forget about it," I grumbled, crouching too. "Where are we?"  
"You don't recognize it?" He glanced at me, amusement tainting his glare.

I looked around. We had come to a halt beneath the roots of a great tree, and they seemed to form a dome above a shallow concave den, which he dragged himself under, army-style.

It was the same tree. Out of thousands of trees, he brought me to the same. exact. tree.

I slid into the den. There wasn't any room to sit up straight, so I sat indian-style across from him, hunched over awkwardly.

"Will you answer my question now?" I coughed.

He traced meaningless patterns in the dirt with his finger. "About the obituary?"

"Yeah," I pressed.

Caine delved into the story, beginning from the night of his thirteenth birthday, expounding on what he had seen that had him so skittish for days afterward.

"I was on my way back with the newspaper, you remember," he explained. "I took the wrong alley and ended up in the abandoned warehouse district."

He coughed hesitantly, but continued to illustrate that he had heard trash cans falling to the ground behind him, and thought he saw a man following him when he spun around to look. He ran, diverting left and banking into the street, where he'd figured he was clear of any possible danger. Before he could cross the pavement, something heavy collided with his chest – a man, he presumed, hooded and snarling, like a rabid dog. He cried out, bucking his legs into its chest, sending it tumbling to the ground. He rolled, deflecting the pounce, and stumbled to his feet, fleeing down Eighth Avenue, running faster than he ever had before.

The monster pursued, but before he could reach my brother, he flew into a woman emerging from a liquor store.

"Stupid of her," he mused, "being out so late, with the killings and all. I was few seconds from our alley when I heard you call me."

"The killings?"

"I should have taught you how to read."

"I learned."

He couldn't suppress the smile. "You did?" he inquired proudly. "Wow."

"Caine?"

"Oh, the killings, right. Well, you remember – it was all over the news and the radios – about the serial killer, or the gang, or whatever they thought it was."

"I researched it, yeah. You think it was the serial killer that attacked you?"

He faltered. "Well, one of them, at least."

I was hard-pressed to push him at the point, but he continued before I could pose any more questions.

"We ran out of food a few days later, if you remember."

My stomach churned uncomfortably as that repressed memory un-repressed itself. "I shouldn't have complained."

He ignored me, and proceeded to explain that he hadn't returned because he was attacked a second time, and didn't get away.

"He...roughed me up pretty badly," he related, staring at his finger still doodling in the dirt. That seemed like a suspiciously succinct summary, but I kept my mouth shut and let hm tell the story. The man, or whoever, had left him lying in the gutter, nearly unconscious.

"I thought I was going to die," he defined, chortling quietly, as if he had told some inside joke. "There was blood everywhere."

When a passerby discovered his body in the morning and called the cops, he was rushed to the nearest emergency room and quickly labeled a possible survivor of the nighttime slayings, but doctors were uncertain he'd still be alive by sundown. He suffered a broken arm, massive internal bruising, and severe clotting around a gaping wound in his neck.

He tugged on his collar with two fingers, revealing a jagged, curved scar near his jugular.

"It wasn't healing properly," he breathed, "but the doctor got the clots cleared out and gave me lots of transfusions when I became conscious again. He said I had lost over 70% of my body's capacity for blood, and had been hooked to the machine just in time to keep me from shriveling into a prune."

I grimaced. "What happened?"

"Well, I'm here, aren't I?"

"Uh, yeah, but aren't you kind of skipping a big part in the middle there? You know, between then and now?" I spun my index finger in impatient circles. "How'd you get out of the hospital? Why did they think you were dead?"

"Like I said – they screwed up. I was discharged."

I folded my arms.

"_Informally_ discharged, fine."

"You just up and _left_ the hospital?"

"The doctor said there was just some final paperwork and I could go. I didn't care about the paperwork, so I went." he shot back as if I were accusing him of something.

"Well, where did you _go _for four years? Why didn't you come home?" I was growing angry, against my efforts to remain calm.

"I didn't think it was safe."

"So you just _left _me to fend for myself? Thanks, big bro!"

"Eisley, I never left you, ever, not for one minute."

I just glared at him, palms open in confusion.

He sighed. "He...he was still out there, somewhere. I wasn't going to lead him back to you. I was in the city the whole time, making sure you were okay." A fleeting memory of birds rushing a frenzy out of a pine tree fluttered through my mind's eye, and I recalled the sound of the fire escaped rattling in the wind.

"But the killings _ended!"_ I responded to the flare of fury crackling to life in my gut.

"You still needed protecting!"

"From what? You weren't there!"

"Dammit," he growled, burying his face in his hands and screaming in frustration. "I couldn't put you in danger, I couldn't," he rocked back and forth in his seated position.

I faltered. "Caine, you've got to make _sense_."

"I can't. Not now. That's all I can say."

I blanched. "Caine, wha- what do you expect me to do? Accept it? The POLICE are _looking_ for you!" I hadn't realized I'd forgotten completely about the latest round of killings, in which my brother, Caine Andrew Monahan, 17, was a suspect. "Oh my god," I muttered, scrambling out from beneath the tree and into the open. He slid out quickly, standing across from me, blocking the route home.

"Did you kill those people?"

He didn't answer, just swallowed, his eyes baleful.

"Caine, I have to ask you. _Did_ you _kill_ those _people_?"

"Yes," he answered me levelly. I should have taken the opportunity to run for cover, screaming for the police, but I was rooted to the spot.

"_Why_?" I whispered hoarsely.

He just shook his head, moving his mouth silently as if he wished he could spill his guts but couldn't.

I was dazed, or in shock. I turned away slowly and headed back the way we had come. I needed to think.

He jogged to catch up with me.

"Eisley, wait-" he caught my arm. I wrenched it out of his stone cold grasp. "I need your help."

"Funny how that works, isn't it? I retorted, pacing off again.

"Emm!" He called, after I'd already gotten a few yards away from him. I halted immediately, closing my eyes. My mind was awash with suppressed memories of our parents, my childhood, my simpler life. This use of my nickname _now_ was both offensive and grounding. I turned around.

He paced over to me, stopping about three feet away. A face-off. I felt ready to shatter, felt the world ending.

"Something bad is going to happen very soon," he told me. "I need you to protect me, so I can protect you."

At the time, those statements couldn't have been more cryptic. Somehow, having my brother back safe was balancing out the outlandish notion that he was a serial killer, though I wasn't denying the latter to be true. Or false.

He caught my response in my eyes, green and intense, reflective of the drizzle beginning to descend on our bodies, two pinpricks of black in an ocean of trees, so infinitesimal, and yet, so hunted.

I started walking again. He fell into step beside me.


	11. Restless

**Author's Note: I know you're probably wondering when the actual Twilight characters come into play here, but as most background stories go, they are mostly _background_, and not as interesting as the sequels, know what I mean? Anyway, don't fret – I'm getting to the Volturi and Carlisle and Edward and all those guys. You may already know what's going to happen. Please keep reading, and review! I'm getting concerned that this story isn't getting reviews or readings simply because it's not my typical CP story. Come on, guys. **

We couldn't walk around outside like normal people anymore, he said.

Though he was four years older than me, Caine had evidently stopped growing at 13, and because of this we shared many similarities about our appearances. Same messy brown hair, same basic facial structure, same height. The only discernible inequality was our eye colors. When I asked him about why his had changed from electric blue to golden topaz, he rattled off a list of side effects given to him by 'some old doctor at the hospital.'

When I asked him why they seemed to get darker as the days passed, he would duck away and say it was the poor lighting.

We stayed in the apartment. I re-routed the GPS trackers of the police cars to my handheld GPS and monitored the squad's movements on a new city map. They continued to hunt my brother, but steered clear of our block.

After about a week of silent chatter from the Seattle police department, and having food delivered by a pizza guy who pushed the boxes through the window for an extra twenty bucks per order, I became restless.

"What are we waiting for?" I asked him one night as I chewed leftover pepperoni. Caine was lying in the corner on a cardboard box bed, absentmindedly stroking Hamlet's neck fur.

"Huh?" He grunted.

"Why do you think something bad is going to happen?"

He didn't answer. Against my better judgment, I had become accustomed to and even accepting of his mysterious demeanor.

"Caine," I crawled over to him, sitting down on the other side of Hamlet. He rested his head in my lap happily. "You know I'll protect you as long as you need me to, but even the police aren't that stupid. They'll come here. I'm not even supposed to be _up_ here. They'll find us, find you."

He nodded distantly, closing his eyes and turning away from me, burying his nose in his makeshift coat pillow.

I sighed, but got up and fetched him a ratty blanket from the corner, pulling it up to his shoulders and brushing his hair gently back from his forehead. He was cold, clammy.

"Caine? Are you sick?" I whispered, but he didn't reply, just breathed even, shallow breaths.

"I'll be fine by morning," he replied as I got to my feet.

Worried, I curled up next to Hamlet and fell into a restless sleep.


	12. Fire

I awoke to the sound of a panicked barking. My vision blurred as I opened my eyes and attempted to untangle myself from the blankets. I was dripping sweat, unbearably warm.

"Oh my god," I whispered hoarsely, blinking back sleep. Outside the fire escape window, the alley was on fire. The flames engulfed the building adjacent to ours, illuminating the silhouette of a cloaked figure standing by the window, watching my previous home go up in smoke.

"Caine? Caine! Come on, we have to get out of here!"

Hamlet whined, scratching at the closet door. I yanked it open, and the instant he had enough room to escape its confines, he rushed for the cloaked figure.

"Hamlet, no!" I shouted, but I didn't have to. The figure whipped a hand to the side, and the dog halted in his tracks, stumbling to the ground, writhing in agony.

"Where is your friend?" came the voice of the shadow, a woman.

"Who are you?" I demanded.

She turned around, and I could see that she was no taller than I was, but a thousand times as menacing. I backed away. "Let my dog go."

"He needs to be controlled," she explained, a deadly smile cracking its way across her face. "Please answer my question. I would hate to have to hurt you."

"I have no friends," I spat.

The pain hit me before I could even consider shouting for help. I crumpled as a searing wave of crippling fire ripped down my spine and through my veins. I couldn't tell if I was screaming or if the fire engines had arrived outside, sirens blaring. It was excruciating.

When it ended, it ended as abruptly as it had begun, and I gagged for breath.

"Where is your friend?"

I stood on shaky legs. Hamlet laid motionless on the floor. "I. have. no. friends," I growled through clenched teeth, closing my eyes.

At that very moment, an explosion rocked the structure of the entire building, and the entire room began to sink diagonally, toward the street. My attacker and I slid down the tilted floor. I caught Hamlet in my arms, grabbed my backpack, and flew to the window.

"Caine!" I shouted into the fire.

The alleyway was devoid of everything except smoke.

I quickly dumped Hamlet on the fire escape and clambered out onto the landing. The railing had snapped. I scrambled down the precipice of stairs, dragging him with me, and on a whim, leapt into the smoky abyss onto the plastic lid of a dumpster.

My attacker pursued, jumping directly from the window to the ground. I gasped, startled, falling to the ground.

Suddenly, a clamor of vociferous noise, trash cans colliding with the cold pavement, resounded behind me, and a hunched figure leapt out of the darkness onto the little woman. I got to my feet, shaking Hamlet violently. He stood.

It was Caine.

He fought wildly. Another cloaked figure appeared from an alley to the left. I was trapped.

"RUN, EISLEY!" He shouted as the second figure thew him to the ground.

I was terrified, much too terrified to form coherent thoughts.

I bullrushed the woman, tackling her away from my brother. The second figure reached for me, but as he did, a knife extended from Caine's sleeve and slid against his throat, jabbing into his neck and severing his head from the majority of his neck. It hung limply there for a second, held together by the flesh, before the man collapsed. I recoiled as if I had touched a hot stove. I thought Caine's eyes met mine for the briefest of moments, black as coal, as night, as the shadowy figure of the woman, whom he kicked into a dumpster. She hit her head and collapsed.

"Caine..." I croaked.

He advanced on me, snarling under his breath.

"Caine? Caine, cut it out, it's me..."

"Run, Eisley," he sputtered, continuing to walk forward. "Run!"

He had me in a corner before he attacked. I did the only thing that made sense – I fought back. At one point, I grasped his coat to pull his deathly glare away from my face, but he slithered out of it and opening his mouth wider than I'd ever seen it go, like a tiger yawning, baring its teeth.

Behind him, the wall of fire was spreading to our building, cutting a line between us and the woman.

As he advanced on me, one final time, I thought I heard him whisper.

_Kill me_. _Kill me now_.

His arms lifted, revealing the glistening dagger in his belt. His body seemed to fall upon mine in slow motion. In the split-second of time I had to register my options, I whipped it from him and shoved the blade into the center of his chest.

Everything was quiet for a moment. I pushed my brother's body off of mine and stood, sweaty, my face wet with tears. The alley was alight with orange flames, and the crackling of them was all I could hear.

_"Run, Emmy,"_ came a broken voice.

I rushed to my brother's side. He reached up with a shaky hand, pulling the knife from his chest and dropping it at my feet.

"Run," he whispered. "Run."

"Where?" I whispered, trying to hold back the anguished sobs.

"South," he choked.

"Caine, I'm so sorry," I whispered.

"Don't be," he rebuked, coughing groggily. "I'm proud of you."

I felt another throe of agony swelling in my chest. "We can go to hospital, Caine, we can-"

He shook his head wildly. The flames were getting closer to us now. "There's not much time, go!"

I heard a groan from the other side of the burning wall. I put on the coat, grabbed the backpack, and turned back to him. "I can't just _leave _you here."

"Yes, you can. Go, Emm. I'll be with you," he breathed painfully, putting a shaky hand on my chest, over my heart. "Run as far and as fast as you can."

I kissed my brother on the forehead.

"I love you," I whispered.

"I love you," he brushed weak fingers against my cheek.

I broke through the flames and ran faster than I'd ever run before.


	13. Navy

**Author's Note: The POV will be changing here and there from now on to encompass both sides of the story. Eisley's POV is First-Person, and the Cullen's POV is Third-Person, though, sometimes, I may add in Carlisle's First-Person POV.**

Everything was a blur.

I blasted through throngs of people out on the street, watching the red-bricked apartment go up in flames, past fire engines and police cars blaring their sirens loud, through the outdoor shopping center, snagging a bike from an older kid who'd only dismounted for a minute to buy a soda from a vending machine. Hamlet trailed me on foot until I had to continue that way as well – the cycle wouldn't make it on the uneven forest terrain, so I dumped it at the foot of the darkened abyss, took one last look at my Seattle, and disappeared into the darkness, letting the rising moon whisk me away toward Elliot Bay.

---

**_The Cullens' POV_**

****"Carlisle, there's someone at the door," Alice chimed, flouncing into the living room, where her adopted father sat reading the Seattle Times. Two or three seconds later, the doorbell rang. He folded up the paper and stood, grinning at his 'youngest' daughter. Well, second youngest, now that Bella had joined the family.

The Cullens weren't expecting company, and certainly not at eleven PM on a Tuesday night.

Carlisle met Esme in the foyer, wearing the same puzzled look. Calm as ever, he pulled the door open.

"Jane," he greeted nonchalantly. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

She strode in with a huff, yanking a newspaper from the lining of her cloak. "Carlisle, Esme," she nodded once to each of them. "Is there a place we may speak in private?"

Husband and wife looked auspiciously at each other over the Volturi's head.

"Of course," Esme enjoined. "Right this way."

Alice was reclining on the smooth, white sofa when her parents returned with a guest.

"Alice Cullen, remove your feet from the table." Carlisle admonished gently, eliciting a doleful blush from the girl. She obeyed.

"Would you give us some privacy, please, dear?" Esme requested, anxious to hear why a member of the royal vampire Volturi felt the need to call at such an inconvenient hour.

"Actually, she should probably hear this," Jane mused. "All of you should probably hear this."

"Very well," Carlisle agreed. "Alice, will you fetch your brothers and sisters?"

She nodded and trotted blithely up the stairs.

Jane wasted no time and put the obvious facts at hand on the table. "I will assume that you've heard about the latest Seattle killings," she pointed briefly at the paper at Carlisle's side.

"Yes. I was not aware, however, that they mandated Volturi interference."

Alice emerged at the top of the stairs, ushering Edward, Bella, Emmett, Rosalie, and Jasper down toward the living room.

"What's going on, Carlisle?" Emmett questioned, hands in his pockets. Rosalie folded her arms.

Jasper floated toward the back, watching. Alice wrapped her thin arms around his.

Edward was silent, stony-faced, and serious as always. Bella leaned into him, uncertain.

"Jane has requested that you listen to what she is about to tell us."

On cue, they gathered closer.

Jane coughed. "Our scouts detected that these new killings were, in fact, due to presence of a vampire."

"A newborn?"

"No," she affirmed, reaching into her cloak again and withdrawing a yellow envelope. She slid it across the table toward Carlisle, and he reached for it slowly, untying the string attachment and letting the paper contents slip onto the glass table. Various documents and photos.

Jane pulled one out from beneath the others and held it up for the Cullens to see.

"This is him, a boy, thirteen. Caius and I began tracking him three months ago, when the killings started."

"How long has he been a vampire?" Emmett put forth.

"Undetermined. However, he seems to be in moderate control of his abilties, thus we concluded he is beyond newborn age."

"What does this have to do with us?" Edward inquired, somewhat harshly, earning himself mindful glares from both Esme and Jane. The latter answered his question with all due respect.

"A few hours ago, Caius and I traced the boy's scent to an apartment in downtown Seattle," she explained, "but the lead was false, and instead of finding him, we discovered a human accomplice, a girl his age, who claimed not to know him until she escaped into the alley and they began to fight us off together. Caius is dead. After he killed him, he turned on the girl and killed her as well. When I regained consciousness, I saw the boy fleeing."

"Where?" Rosalie queried monotonously.

"South, I believe," Jane stood, as did Carlisle. "I almost lost him, but sources in Italy believe he is on his way here, and I am here because I want to know if you have heard anything about that, or seen anything." She glanced at Alice meaningfully.

Alice shook her head in the negative. Jane sighed.

"Carlisle, this monster needs to be put down – he has endangered our existence by rampaging through an industrial area and involving a human in his cohorts. Humans cannot be trusted – who knows how much he told her, or how much she blabbed to other humans."

Carlisle, for his part, said very little in response. "I find it against my better judgment to hunt our own kind," he breathed.

"These are not _normal_ circumstances, by any means," Jane rebuffed. "We ask only for your assistance in his capture. Order must be maintained." She paused. "Had he chosen to flee North I would have this same conversation with Tanya's colony."

Carlisle pushed the papers back into the envelope and presented it in his outstretched hand. "We will assist in his capture. We will not be party to his death."

Jane smiled macabrely. "I will be in touch." She pushed the papers back into the envelope, burying it once more in her cloak.

And in a flash, she was gone, the door snapping shut behind her.

"Carlisle?" Jasper whispered, emitting a wave of calmness over the atmosphere.

"It's alright, Jasper," he replied gingerly, realizing what his son was doing to his mood. "Alright, upstairs, all of you." He turned to his children, clapping his hands twice in command.

They bustled away.

"Goodnight, Daddy," Alice chirped, kissing him on the cheek before retreating to her quiet time, something Carlisle had them do to wind down during the hours when normal humans slept.

"Good night."

When he was sure they were gone, he rotated toward his wife, embracing her gently. "One rogue isn't worth all the victims I'll have to send to the morgue for when he reaches Forks."

"I'm only concerned about nine victims," she responded amorously.

Carlisle rested his chin on the top of her head. "And you makes ten. We'll be careful."

---

I was personally surprised by how far one tank of human adrenaline could carry me, and how smoothly. In my run it seemed that the trees parted for me, and the underbrush flattened itself politely beneath the soles of my muddy All-stars. The few times I fell or was clipped by the branches I blasted through, I was on my feet before the dust could clear.

It felt like hours I ran, until I reached my impasse.

My dog slowed to a jagged walk, emerging from the trees behind me onto the thin beach where I stood, gazing statically at the shifting waters of Elliot Bay. In the hazy distance, framed by a navy sky and a million white stars, a stretch of island existed, a few miles away.

A red pinprick of light floated off toward the left.

Hamlet brushed against my side, sagging with exhaustion.

_What now?_

As if desiring to answer my question, my backpack began to ring faintly. I had forgotten completely that I had the thing, and wondered transiently what was inside that could be making the noise.

Dazed, I dropped the pack to the pebbled ground and opened it.

Illuminated by a backlit screen, the alarm on a cell phone buzzed animatedly. _12:30 a.m. _

I flipped it open. No signal. Who would I have called?

Everyone was gone. My mother, my father, my brother. I had never felt so empty, so alone.

I sunk to the ground, unresponsive to Hamlet's nudging. He prodded his nose into the backpack.

"Hamlet, don't...awh," I groaned, as the contents were spilled over the stones.

I reached for them quickly in attempts to save them from the damp ground, unaware that Hamlet's insistence had been a blessing in disguise.

Caine had filled the sack with everything I would need to navigate away from Seattle, away from those pursuing us. Pursuing me.

A bottle of water, some fruit wrapped in a paper bag, a flashlight, some bandages.

A glossy compass, clipped to a map of Washington State.

My tin of money – probably what amounted to a few hundred dollars. My tape recorder, the old one, with my 10 or 20 little mall songs on it. I felt a pang of homesickness.

Matches. Caine was Captain of the Obvious.

And pressed toward the back of the sack, a notebook: the purple cover was labeled seventy pages, but it was heavier than it should have been, and slips of paper hung limply out of all sides of it. The spiral seemed contorted, stretched too far to encompass the capacity of its contents.

A pencil was bound loosely in the metal coil.

Somehow, I was unsure if I should open it, or if it were something I didn't want to know: an answer, or something.

I pulled back the worn cover, folding it over.

A note, scrawled on what I made out to be a corner of the Seattle map I'd used to track my brothers' movements, was paperclipped to the front page.

I grabbed the flashlight and flipped the switch.

_Eisley. _

_By now, you should be out of the city. If you haven't reached Port Angeles yet, you must before the sun rises at 5:18 this morning, the 23__rd__ of October. I am sorry that I couldn't be with you. The map inside your backpack will lead you to the West coast of Washington State. From there, you will stowaway to Alaska, to a safe place, indicated on the map. _

_Follow the directions on the next page. You do not have time to waste reading this book now. _

_I am sorry that I could not answer all of your questions. You deserved honestly, and now that I am gone you will have it. Always remember, I am your brother, and I am proud of you. Don't be afraid. _

_- Caine_

The flashlight slipped from my hand, crashing to the ground and extinguishing the light. I fought to steady my brothers, but the lamenting sobs wracking my entire body had me minimized to a heap of agonized misery. For the first time since the fire that killed my parents and destroyed my home and made me an orphan, I wept for the end of my life as I knew it, for being alone in a world that wanted nothing more than to hunt me, make me an outlaw.

The sky circled above, a blanket of navy. I screamed my afflictions to the universe, for the end of things.

My liferaft of an existence was collapsing under my weight, and my love was with everything I'd lost.

I killed my brother.

And I _was_ afraid.

Hamlet pushed his way into my arms, and I finished my crying into his dirty fur, holding him as if my very survval depending on it. He lifted me to my knees, bucking gently until I stood. He dragged the backpack to my feet and took the notebook in his jaws, pressing it against my stomach. I took it, swallowing back bile.

The next page was titled in Caine's unruly, big letters.

_ELLIOT BAY. _

_Eisley, there is a marina on the left of the bay, facing Bainbridge. A speedboat, called Delilah, is docked in Pier Four, Space Nine. The keys are in the ignition. Be sure you untie the holding ropes. Hurry._

_He had the whole thing planned out for me_, I mused sadly_. He had said something bad would happen, and it did. He made plans for me._

Beneath this text, a scrap of newspaper was taped to the page, a photo of an elderly man, 76, by the name of Johnston Wilder, from the Obituaries section of the Seattle Times. I knew my the unpleasant churning in my gut that this was the previous owner of the boat. Why did Caine feel the need to show me this?

It blew anxiously in the breeze, and I snapped the book shut, shoving it into the backpack with renewed determination, breaking into a run down the beach toward the cluster of lights that was the marina.

_He had known he was going to die. _


	14. Refueling

**Author's Note: If you would like to follow Eisley's escape on a map, go to Google Maps, click Get Directions, and type in A) Seattle, Washington, to B) Forks, Washington. For a better visual, click Terrain, in the top right corner of the map, when it appears. Obviously, Eisley will not end up in Alaska. ALSO, I have made a directional error – Eisley is heading WEST, not South. Please excuse any previous instances where it was stated she was traveling South. It is WEST.**

The marina was dark, lit only by the occasional lights emitted from boats' interiors and the circular spots of it cast by lamps rigged to lines spiderwebbed above me. Hamlet kept close to me as we hurried along the sea-worn wooden planks of the dock, down to Pier Four.

We had to duck rapidly when a few older men emerged from a bigger yacht, unloading crates, but the slip onto the _Delilah_ was successful.

I quickly loosened the holding ropes from the post and hopped over the railing. Hamlet seemed hesitant, but leapt over, tailing me to the wheel. I had no clue how to operate the thing, but of course, Caine knew that, too.

Taped to the dashboard was a water-damaged manual. I yanked it off and flipped it open. Caine had circled the important steps in red sharpie.

_Lower the ignition lever on the right side of the dashboard. _

_Start the ignition by turning the key to the right. _

_Flip the ignition switch to the RUN position. _

_Direction is controlled by the wheel. _

I quickly obeyed, cranking the gas the second I threw myself back into the seat, leaving the marina behind as quickly as I'd left my life in Seattle behind.

The bay was beautiful at night, untainted by the sun, the only reflections coming from the stars glistening off its effervescent surface, parted smoothly by the curve of the speedboat as we sped along. I kept the map close, the compass resting on top of it, directing me West. My mind wandered.

_"Run," he whispered. "Run."_

_"Where?" I whispered, trying to hold back the anguished sobs._

_"West," he choked._

_"Caine, I'm so sorry," I whispered. _

_"Don't be," he rebuked, coughing groggily. "I'm proud of you."_

_The fire engulfed the alley_.

I came back to reality as the Bainbridge Island lights came into view. As per the instructions on the following page in the notebook, I arrived before the sun rose. I checked the time on the phone, noticing that it would run out of battery power soon. _4:49 a.m._

I docked the boat at the far end of the marina, in a vacant slot in a vacant pier.

As per the instructions, I made my way through Pier Twelve to the parking lot, where a semi truck was parked, surrounded by men unloading its contents. I collapsed behind a pickup and opened the notebook.

_BAINBRIDGE ISLAND._

_The truck should have arrived at 4:30 a.m. It is carrying a shipment of fuel for the company that owns this marina's rental speedboats. Create a diversion, use the buggy to take a crate back to the Delilah, and refuel. You need to take at least eleven boxes of fuel to have enough to make it to Port Angeles._

A _diversion_? Who did he think I was was? James Bond? And tugging a noisy cart along a sidewalk of creaky wooden boards was like _asking_ the police to arrest me. _Jesus, Caine_, I whispered to Hamlet.

I looked around, weighing my options.

A motorcycle was parked a few spaces to my right.

_I can't believe I'm doing this_, I murmured.

I returned to the _Delilah _to retrieve our nearly empty fuel container and the matches from the backpack.

As quietly as possible, I wheeled the bike as close as I could to the semi without being spotted by the three or four guys working around it. I gauged the next step, so as to avoid wasting time wondering what to do next. A Kawasaki Mule, green, dirty, rolled around from the side of the truck, driven by a worker. He stepped out and helped load a few boxes into the back. I opened the can of fuel in my hand and dumped it over the seat of the motorcycle, then quickly rolled beneath it, ripping a couple of wires and pushing them together again with a crackle of electricity.

I'd seen enough movies to know how to hotwire most vehicles.

It revved to life, jerking forward. I waited for the Mule to be filled, and before the driver could reclaim his seat in the front, I lit that motorcycle on fire.

It reacted as if it were a living thing, roaring, barreling full-speed toward the small office building on the far side of the parking lot. Yelling ensued, and the four workers took off after it, deserting the semi.

I reacted as if my very life depended it on it, and, for all I know, it did.

When the _Delilah_ was filled to capacity, Hamlet and I were off again, toward Port Angeles, the sun rising behind us.


	15. Clean

The map and my calculations indicated that to reach Port Angeles, which was 94 miles away, via a speedboat traveling approximately 70 miles per hour, according to the dial, we would be on the water for at least an hour and a half.

I got comfortable at the wheel, hugging Caine's coat around my shoulders against the morning chill.

The breakage of dawn behind us, combined with the light it cast on the water, did wonders in clearing my head.

I wasn't out of the danger zone yet, according to Caine, but I felt safe enough on the water with no one around.

Hamlet munched on some chum I found in a cooler, while I bit into an apple from the paper bag.

I flipped through the notebook again, checking on my next instructions.

_By the time you reach Port Angeles, the cell phone will be dead. I only intended for you to use it to tell the time. I suppose you could steal another one, but you've probably already realized there's no one for you to call._

I swallowed the next bite of my fruit slowly, digesting that last phrase.

_The buses out of Port Angeles run as far as Fairholm, on the other side of Lake Crescent, before they make route exchanges. Buy a ticket as soon as you arrive – it's likely you won't have enough time to mull around before the bus leaves, so stay close to the station. Once you reach Fairholm, board the connecting bus to Forks. There is a tour bus that runs out of Forks to La Push, an Quileute Indian reservation on the coast, every two hours beginning at 2:00 p.m. every day. _

_When you reach La Push, follow the road to First Beach._

I jotted down some notes on time on the page with the blunt pencil.

It was 5:39 a.m.

I estimated arrival in Port Angeles around 7:15 a.m.

If I could catch a bus by 7:45, I might make it to Fairholm by 9:00, and Forks by 9:45.

That gave me nearly four hours of time to kill.

_If your timing is ahead of the money when you reach Forks, stay close to the main industrial area and lots of people. If you can, wait out your time near the police station, but don't alert them. Be careful. You are being hunted. _

A shiver rattled its way down my spine. _Hunted? _By the woman?

_What was she doing to me in the apartment? _

I had too many questions, and, for a minute, I wondered what the hell I was doing, following the directions of a dead boy to an unknown 'safe place' in..._ Alaska?_ I didn't want to go to Alaska. There was nothing in _Alaska_.

Well, nothing _I _knew of.  
Caine had been keeping secrets so long that I'd simply stopped asking questions.

Even if I made it to Alaska (it might as well have been a foreign country) unscathed, what way of life would await me? Would I want life enough to actually _live_ it?

---

I'd never been to a place like Port Angeles. It was one of those childish fantasy destinations, a popular spot for tourists and Washingtonians with enough money to travel there for weekend shopping trips, but my only affiliation to it was through pictures I'd seen in glossy state magazines.

I'd begun to tune into Caine's train of thoughts on his escape-from-Seattle guidebook. Reading between the lines, I decided that to avoid possible detection by docking the _Delilah _in the marina at the Port, we would avoid docking it at the Port.

I found some tape and a few plastic bags in the cabin of the speedboat, and quickly waterproofed the contents of my backpack before shoving them back in, along with Caine's thin coat. The phone was dead – I left it on the dashboard.

When the bay was in sight, about a half-a-mile away, I whistled for Hamlet, who was at my side in an instant, tail wagging as if we were on some adventure, energized by a stomach full of chum and a few minutes of sleep.

I locked the boat on full speed, and we jumped overboard, swimming for shore.

We drifted into the shadowy areas beneath the docks, and I tugged my way down the marina by the wooden poles driven down into the deep blue water, becoming shallower the closer to dry ground we got.

Workers and the family owners of gleaming yachts bustled about above us, rattling dust from the wooden planks. It showered down in mists, and I ducked beneath the surface of the water to rid it from my hair.

Underwater was a different world. Though my lung capacity was weak and my time there thus brief, I felt safe, enveloped. It was pleasantly cool, slightly lukewarm from the sun, which shone proudly in the sky in atypical wonder. The few clouds in the sky seemed to stay away from its rays, as if the sun were guaranteeing it would not be dark today.

Using all my muscle (not saying much), I pushed Hamlet up and we dragged ourselves out of the water onto the boardwalk of a vacant docking space. Hamlet whined, shaking himself violently to rid his pelt of the water.

I collapsed for a minute to catch my breath, soaking wet, and heavy under the weight of so much liquid in my clothes.

Based on my magazine-ial affiliation to Port Angeles, the city did not disappoint. For a moment, it hurt to realize that I couldn't stick around, explore the quaint little shops and massive big-label stores, or have a bite to eat at Bella Italia, a restaurant we passed that appealed to my sense of smell.

My stomach rumbled. Clutching my shirtfront made me remember I was sopping wet, and earning subsequent awkward glances from bystanders, people with simple lives, I would have guessed, and most certainly fewer problems than I had.

_Focus, Eisley,_ I breathed.

I retrieved the time from an elderly gentleman (one look at my and my dog's wet, disheveled appearances and he was already frowning in disgust) reading a newspaper on a street corner. _7:24 a.m._

A you-are-here map of the Port Angeles shopping center led me to the bus station, where I discovered that Caine had been slightly off in his bus calculations. The next one wouldn't depart until 7:56 a.m..

With my thirty minutes, I bought a ticket, grabbed a machine-vended sandwich, and breezed through the closest clothing store I could find, an offbeat indie nook crammed wall to wall with foreign designer labels at especially cheap prices. Panicked or not, I was in my element.

I paid for the outfit, only one, and wore it out of the store, feeling refreshed in clean, darkwashed-denim jeans, new sneakers, a pale yellow undershirt layered over by a long-sleeved gray thermal tee and a short-sleeved collared red-plaid shirt. Conveniently, a pet store was set up at the end of the block, so I restocked for Hamlet, buying a small bag of dog food, a thin box of treats, and a carmine collar-harness set. At his whiny insistence, I also purchased a rawhide chewbone, and that made him very happy dog.

We made the bus in the nick of time and settled down toward the back. I listened to 'Bruised' by Jack's Mannequin on my weathered tape recorder, Hamlet dozing in my lap.


	16. Pursuit

_**Cullens' POV**_

__Jane returned to the Cullen's home the following morning with new intelligence on the runaway vampire she _believed _was Caine Andrew Monahan.

"Demetri tracked his scent to Port Angeles," she explained to Carlisle she ignored the tea he offered. He leaned softly against the kitchen counter and sipped his coffee. "He arrived at 7:20 this morning. We would have captured him but it was an unusually sunny day and he kept to the main boulevards."

She whipped a photo out of her cloak and pushed it toward him. He straightened his back, analyzing it. A pixellated photo of a young boy, with dark hair growing down past his ears.

"How old is he, once more?"

"Thirteen, when he was Turned."

"Have you found out how long ago that was?"

"Our sources have traced his origin to an orphanage in Chicago, then to Seattle, during the newborn outbreak in 2007. We believe he was Turned in an attack that failed to kill him."

"Odd," Carlisle mused. Jane eyed him warily. He noticed, and pushed the photo back. "Just that a four-year-old fledgling would return to a large city to hunt after years of _not_ doing so."

"We cannot take unnecessary risks, Carlisle," she responded, aware of the path he was going down.

"Perhaps if someone explained your laws to him-"

"_Our_ laws, and as I said," she snatched the paper. "We cannot take unnecessary risks."

Outside, the clouds drifted away from the sun for a moment, casting a pale light through the window of the room. The glisten of Carlisle's skin hid the spark of disdain in his honey eyes.

"The boy purchased a ticket for a bus that left around 8, heading West, no doubt trying to avoid detection by not traveling on foot. Demetri is tailing his scent as we speak. We intend to intercept his transport before it reaches the border of the city. Look at the bright side, Carlisle," she grinned eerily. "You and your family may not even need to involve yourselves."

_**Eisley POV**_

__We connected at Fairholm, getting on a second bus only moments after getting off the first one.

Crossing the bus station, I overheard the Bus-to-Forks driver on his radio, apologizing to the station for the delay, as it was caused by unexpected engine trouble. I asked for the time, 9:23 a.m., before settling down once more in the back. According to the map, this drive was only thirty miles, through the mountains and otherwise tree-infested wilderness. A river called Soleduck lined the road. I ran a finger along it, feeling the creases in the paper. Hamlet nudged his hand under my hand and I stroked him gently, eyes closed, just...thinking.

Trying to ignore the invisible bloodstains weighing down my hands, making me dirty.

Caine.

_**Carlisle's POV**_

__After Jane departed the house for the second time in 24 hours, I ventured upstairs to discuss our conversation with my family, but before I could call a house meeting, Alice caught my arm in the hallway and pulled me into her room.

"Carlisle," she whispered, waving me forward with her hands and bouncing uncomfortably from foot to foot. "I saw something that maybe you should know about."

"Alice, Alice, you're making me dizzy," I steadied her with a hand on each shoulder. "Calm down."

She did so, exhaling deeply and shaking her head.

"What did you see?"

"A bus, a city bus, on its way here from Fairholm, being attacked by...dark figures."

"Volturi?" I questioned gravely. "That's their plan, Alice."

"To blow up a bus full of innocent _humans?_" she gasped.

"The vampire they've been hunting is riding that bus," I returned, though it was extremely disconcerting that the Volturi were going to find it necessary to set fire to an entire bus of people to hide the death of one vampire.

"Carlisle, I know a vampire when I... 'see' one," she flicked two fingers up and down, "and there are no vampires on that bus."

"Are you certain?"

She nodded vigorously with the perpetual enthusiasm that was her signature.

"Jane just left to join Demetri," I deadpanned, kneading my brow with two fingers.

"Why do they think the vampire is on the bus?" Alice piqued softly.

"She said Demetri was tracking his scent." I turned back to my daughter. "Alice, are you _certain-"_

"Yes, Carlisle, I'm _certain."_

"I have to ask, because you know how subjective your visions are."

She nodded somberly, her topaz eyes gleaming, full of admiration and questions, telling me it was my turn to make a decision. She hated the slaughter of innocents as much as I did, but, as I did, knew that oftentimes it was a way of life we had to accept. Not everyone could be a … vegetarian.

"We should stop them before they do it," she mumbled, so quietly I almost didn't hear.

I looked up. "I'm going to go have a word with your mother. Will you fetch your brothers and sisters and meet me in the kitchen in five minutes?"

"Mmmhmm," she replied, and we parted in the hallway.

---

Esme was busying herself watering plants in the kitchen. I heard the sound the tap bouncing against the plastic can as I paced through the living room, lost in thought.

"Esme," I leaned against the arched doorframe.

"Carlisle?"

I jumped right into it. "Jane left a few minutes to meet with Demetri. They're intercepting a bus on its way to Forks – they think their vampire is aboard."

She respired painfully, but didn't answer.

"Alice believes otherwise, but Jane is sure Demetri has the boy's scent."

Esme replaced the watering can beneath the sink and turned to me, approaching slowly.

I continued. "Alice has seen the Volturi attacking the bus and setting it on fire."

"Oh my god," she gasped into her palm. "Are there humans aboard?"

"Yes."

"But the vampire is_ not?_ Are they out of their minds? The Volturi have never been so reckless, or violent!"

Before she could go off on a tangent, the children slipped quietly into the kitchen behind me. I moved to the counter to give them room to file in.

"Alice told us what she saw," Bella interjected hesitantly.

I noted her with gentle eyes, disconcerted. "I was just discussing it with Esme," I told them before turning back to my wife. Before I could begin to explain to her that I would accept if she didn't want I or any of the family to be involved, she pivoted, tossing a dishrag down on the counter with a force that might have damaged the granite.

"You be careful, Carlisle." she said.

"I don't think we should be concerning ourselves with this," Rosalie interrupted icily. "The vampire will kill people anyway – better for us if he's not on his way to _Forks_ to do it."

"_Rose_," Emmett admonished harshly, under his breath.

I advanced on her, scowling. "Rosalie Lillian Hale, without humans, there would be no vampires, and without our help, both our existence _and_ theirs will be threatened. We do not allow innocents to die at the hands of our own government."

That silenced her rather thoroughly. She withdrew her argument.

I gave her another few seconds to squirm under my stern glare before moving away.

"Alice, how much time do we have?"

Edward answered. "Jane said the bus left Port Angeles at 8 this morning. It's 9:30 now, so it's probably just outside of Fairholm, if it's still going West, like she said. Sorry," he blushed, seeing my amused look. "I couldn't help eavesdropping."

"I'll dismiss it," I responded. "Jasper, Emmett, would you come with me?"

"Sure, Carlisle," they responded in kind.

"I can help, too, Dad," Edward put in. Bella instinctively wrapped her arms tighter around his waist.

"I know, son, but I think we can handle it. Best not put Bella in a state of worry," I smiled amiably. She flushed, but I assured her she wasn't in the wrong.

Esme leaned into my arms, kissing me gently.

"Be careful."

"We will."

We were on the road a few seconds later, having hit the ground running, flying at full-speed.


	17. Running

_**Eisley POV**_

****Not ten minutes had passed before the tensely quiet bus ride took a turn for the worse.

The sky, which had been darkening progressively since the departure from Port Angeles, began to leak into a drizzle and mutate into a mild downpour in a matter of moments. The bus, which had been rattling progressively since the departure from Fairholm, began to slow, engine groaning, before the driver steered it to a halt on the side of the narrow road.

"Sorry folks," he apologized embarrassedly, directing ten or fifteen dismayed and disappointed passengers, including myself, to please exit the bus and wait by the side of the highway while he examined the engine.

I nudged Hamlet, pulling him up, stomach churning. Something felt off. We filed off the bus and filtered through the other passengers to stand a few feet away from a group of them trying to fit under a single umbrella.

It appeared as though it would take a while, so I planted myself down on the blacktopped pavement, watching the man, a burly black guy, piddle away at the smoking engine.

Hamlet tugged anxiously at my grip on his harness, reeling back on his hind legs with little yips of impatience, the way cats do when they've spotted a bird or a squirrel or something tasty they think they can catch.

"Calm _down_, boy, he's almost down," I scolded distantly, unfocused. Hamlet bounced apprehensively, trying to circle his way out of my grasp.

"Ow!" I grunted. "Hamlet!" He had clamped down on my hand with enough force to break the skin, forcing me to recoil and release him. The appendage began to bleed profusely, streams of crimson streaking the flesh. My dog had _never_ bitten me before.

He took off like a shot, toward the other side of the road, a drop-off cliff, beyond which the Olympic Mountains sat majestically.

"Hamlet! No!" I got to my feet painfully and sprinted after him, backpack flouncing against my back, reaching the edge of the road just as he leapt clean over the metal railing, sliding down a slope of old, damp leaves before disappearing into a mess of brush and trees.

"Hamlet!"

The rain was beginning to fall heavier now. I shook my mop of hair out of my eyes and called him again.

A single howl rang from below. I hesitated, completely torn. _Stupid dog, STUPID DOG!_

I whipped my gaze back to the bus. The driver was slamming the hood shut and directing the passengers back on board.

"All better, ladies and gents! Terribly sorry for the delay – complimentary bottled water for everyone."

I swallowed, peering into the abyss below me, my eyes blurry with rain.

"Wait!" I called through the downpour, but everyone was boarded. The headlights fluttered on.

In the three or four nanoseconds before the engine started, I saw a man, cloaked, standing beneath the trees on the other side of the street, looking aghast directly at me.

Then the bus exploded.

In a cacophony of sound, like a thousand shotguns fired in quick succession, the vehicle was engulfed in flames, puffing out like a blowfish, delivering a blast that threw me off my feet and into the railing. I cracked my head against the wooden post and rolled to the side, shouting in pain.

The heat from the bus radiated in thick waves, rolling through heavy black smoke. Tires popped and debris went flying out in all directions. My ears were ringing, so much so that everything was silent for a few brief seconds. Before the second wave hit, all I could hear was Hamlet's barking, growing louder and louder, higher in pitch.

The cloaked figure disappeared in a flash.

My vision began to fade when sharp teeth closed around my arm and dragged me down, over the side of the road.

We careened down the slope, the damp leaves and muddy ground accelerating the descent into the trees. Hamlet yelped as we hit rocks and fallen limps, tumbling into a patch of grass. I wrapped my arms around my head as we rolled, waiting for it to be over. When we slowed it was so abrupt I was sent stumbling to my feet, smashing side-first into a knotty pine tree.

Hamlet barked, both ferociously and encouragingly. I grabbed the backpack and ran after him, splashing through the creek and fleeing deeper into the wild.

I became more oriented to consciousness as we bounded through the trees. Above, rain crashed into the tops of the trees, which blocked most of the shower, spattering down to the ground evenly with minute pops and trickles. There was no more to see than the deep shades of green pines and the translucent leaves of oaks as we barreled through.

The cold set in fast, whipping my face with its chilly wind and pushing me to my knees, scraping my hands on the branches I failed to catch the few times I fell to the ground with a thump.

It didn't take long for them to catch up.

I was brought down by a heavy object colliding with my side, ripping me away from Hamlet's wake. I crashed to the ground, screaming and kicking at my attacker. My foot connecting with his face and he recoiled as Hamlet tackled him, biting at every inch of the man's black cloak he could reach.

I pushed myself against a tree, trying to stand, crumpling as a searing fire ripped through my ribcage.

I was on my feet again, almost drowning in the amount of adrenaline coursing through my veins, ready to run again when a second figure, smaller than the first, appeared in the distance. Hamlet yelped tortuously, collapsing to the ground in pain. My breath choked in my throat as I caught the face of the woman who had met me in the Seattle apartment.

I broke for Hamlet, grabbing his harness. She was before me in an instant, her hand whipping out to connect with my face. I fell to the ground on my back, pushing myself away frantically. Hamlet stood, shaken, over me.

She advanced, leaning in closer, baring her teeth like a dog. Her canines were impressively long and pointed.

I closed my eyes, waiting to be stabbed or shot or anything, anything, my hands gripping the burnished metal clasps on Hamlet's harness.

Through the rain, I heard a grunt, followed swiftly by an unpleasant thump and a sickening crunch.

For a moment, I thought I was dead.

I opened my eyes to see a third figure, not like the first two, tumble to the ground near the woman, having thrown her off me.

Hamlet barked me into awareness of the fact that now was the time to run.

We ran, two streaks of shadowy ghosts in the forest, until nothing was left to envelop us but the abyss of trees and our fear.

The last sounds I heard before I collapsed was panicked barking, the faint burbling of water, and the rustling of leaves on the ground, swallowing me up before my body hit the muddy floor.


	18. Misunderstanding

****Jasper tackled Jane just as she was moving in for the killing stroke – a paralyzing bite, snap of the neck, removal of appendages. Emmett stood guard over Demetri, who groaned as he stood, rocking from side to side, cradling his chest awkwardly. Carlisle, coming out of his run, slowed to a jog and then a walk, emerging through the trees just in time to see a human figure fleeing into the underbrush.

"Carlisle!" Jane shouted, getting to her feet. "What is the meaning of this?" Her voice was fierce, demanding.

"Are you alright, son?" Carlisle ignored her, first addressing Jasper, who got to his feet and nodded.

"Carlisle!"

"There was no need to kill all those people, Jane!" Carlisle advanced menacingly, in a way that startled both the emotionally calming Jasper and big, burly Emmett. Their foster father's typically compassionate and peaceful demeanor made no appearance here. "The boy wasn't even on _board!_"

Jane did not back down, striding forward as well. Though trapped in a child's body, she reached five feet in height and made up for what she lacked in physical intimidation with her vampiric abilities. "WE HAD HIM HERE WHEN YOU ATTACKED US!"

Jasper reacted to the escalating fury between the two authority figures and projected platonic emotions into their heads. Carlisle felt these effects immediately and relaxed, as did Jane, though she glared at Jasper.

"The vampire was never here, Jane," Carlisle spoke evenly. "Alice saw the bus before it broke down, and he was not among the passengers."

"We have his _scent,"_ she insisted. "We had him five _minutes_ ago."

"Could it not have been a human who simply matched his description?"

"If it was a human, than that _human," _she spat, "had that _vampire's_ smell on it."

"Normally, Jane, we're able to tell the difference between a human and a vampire without second guesses." Carlisle returned honestly. It was true – there were definite differences between the two species, and the ability to distinguish them was among the most basic of vampire capabilities.

"We have no knowledge of his skills," Jane explained bitterly, "perhaps a cloaking ability or natural resistance to other vampires. Any number of vampire traits could explain this misunderstanding."

"Or it is simply a misunderstanding," he obliged complaisantly.

"Either way, this human has our boy's scent, matches his description, and is _running_ for a reason, and it would behoove your and your family to refrain from interfering."

"_You _requested our help," Carlisle justified, "with the capture of a vampire, not the killing of innocent humans."

"Human are far from innocent, Carlisle," she interrupted plainly. "Though as much as I would like them all Turned, we are not on some silly hunting mission. If I am wrong about this vampire, we will pursue his interests elsewhere. But _you_ should know that we do not consider the life of this human, if it is a human, worth more than our boy's. For _now," _she growled, "consider that request withdrawn."

On that final word, she and Demetri faded into the trees, leaving Carlisle, Jasper, and Emmett their own devices.

"Can either of you smell him?" Carlisle asked his sons once they were alone.

"It's not vampiric, whatever it is," Jasper sniffed.

"Actually, it smells a bit like wet dog," Emmett griped, sifting through some leaves.

"That's very astute, Emmett," Jasper praised quietly. "How can you tell?"

"Dog tracks," he responded monotonously, pointing at the four-toed indentations in the mud at his feet.

Carlisle suppressed a grin.

_**Eisley POV**_

__I'm not sure how long I was out.

A few minutes, a few hours. The darkness of the sky could have been because of the presence of night or the presence of clouds.

Recollection of my situation came in waves, little flashes, momentary memories.

The rain had ceased falling, save for the occasional drips pooling in the leaves of trees somewhere far above me.

I sat up slowly, half-asleep and half-expecting that I was back in Seattle, still lost in the Sewell Park forest, waking up from a night spent in terror. I would go home to my alley and my cardboard box, shaking off the aftershocks of this bad dream. I would order a double hot fudge sundae from down the street, and go to the library to read some Harry Potter book, or maybe a romance novel, just for a change of pace.

As I scrubbed the last remnants of sleep out of my eyes, I came around full-tilt.

The icy air pummeled my chest through a circle of dull blue light at the end of a hollowed, dark space, in which I had apparently been unconscious. I put a tentative hand above my head, touching chilled stone. Beneath me, dirt and pebbles.

Groaning against the pain in more parts of my body than I could count on one hand, I slid out of the tiny cave and into the dim light of the woods.

Strangely, I was nearly certain I was alone. Maybe it was the lack of commotion around me, or Hamlet, lapping water from the peaceful river as if he was without worldly cares or affections. I inhaled a sweet, sappy aroma, accented with the nippy scent of autumn air. The trees swayed collectively in the wind as it blew threw the canopy, which seemed miles above us. This clearing was lined by the pines, housed the river, and almost made my being-lost predicament seem like a blessing, a lucky break to be in a place so serenely beautiful.

I might have heard the Earth grinding on its axis, it was so quiet.

Hamlet's ears perked up when he heard my shoes crunching on the pebbled ground, and he hobbled over to me, one front paw lifted, bloody. He licked my hands softly, and I bent down to hug him with every bit of love I had in me. I whispered soothing words to him, and he laid down, head on my lap. I noticed my backpack a few feet away and grabbed it, digging for the first aid kit.

I dipped the injured foot in the crystal water, rubbing the dirt out of the fur until it had returned to its regular light brown color, wishing I had a water hose, so I could bathe him properly.

I smoothed a hand over his leg in an effort to comfort him. My fingers slid over the rough, crescent-shaped scar on his shoulder that had never allowed fur to grow over it again. In a flash of memory, I saw Caine pulling his shirt collar down with two fingers, pointing out the scar left by a wound on his neck from the night he was attacked.

Like a bite.

I finished up, wrapping the shallow cut in gauze and removing his harness to make him more comfortable. I reached to unlatch his collar, but he wriggled out of my grasp, shaking his head, nudging my hand. It had stopped bleeding and begun to clot. Cringing, I washed it gently in the river and then assessed my other injuries.

Like a bite.

My ribcage was bruised, badly. Judging by the reddish color, and what I knew about bruises, I'd say it happened about an hour ago, during the pursuit, and by that I judged that the hour couldn't be beyond early afternoon. My arms and legs were littered with various cuts, scrapes, and yellowing bruises. I couldn't see my face, but my right eye was tender to the touch.

A bite?

I cleaned the blood off of my hands and wrapped my arm and waist in age bandages. I was certainly no expert in first aid, but did what I could to ease the pain of standing up and moving around.

(_Pfffft_, I exhaled, shaking fantastical theories out of my head. It was coincidence – any number of weapons or fists could have made coincidentally similar cuts. I didn't live in lalaland.)

I pulled the map out of the bag, unfolding it onto the rocks. Using the pencil, I circled Fairholm, and, based on my guess that only a few minutes had passed before the bus was hit, I traced a thin line down the road, approximately 25 miles from Forks.

But who knew where I was now? Somewhere lost in the green area of the map, maybe miles and miles away from the main road, and a definite lower altitude.

My stomach contorted in hunger. I wondered what McGyver would have done and then kicked myself for getting a laugh out of my little reference, wondering if I'd ever be happy again without feeling guilty about it at the same time.

My subconscious nagged at me to pack it up and keep moving, at least until nightfall.

I shoved everything back into the black Jansport and clucked my tongue at Hamlet, who was up and by my side without a moment's hesitation. With the compass tucked safely in my hand, we headed West, but the maze-like forest soon proved too difficult to navigate without the sun's light to distinguish magnetic north, as if the planets were all drifting away from their natural gravitational pulls.

I had always been hopeless with directions, but we headed West as far as it would take us before hitting the base of a mountain, and progressing South around it.

I kept my mind racing, busy thinking about everything except the situation. Though there was no escaping the terribly agonizing ache in the bowels of my gut, I held one-sided conversations with Hamlet, who seemed to listen intently, about the trees and the rocks and the river we perambulated alongside, and the last Shakespeare play I'd read, my theories on how the potato chip came into existence, and why you could only see stars during the night.

By dusk, we had followed the river to a beautiful waterfall constructed by large, smoothly rounded boulders covered in moss. We clambered down the wall to an enclaved a few yards down, and settled down below, hidden in the open space behind the torrent of water. The river rushed out ahead of us, brave, defiant of the nightfall and the exhaustion it brought to the wind and the trees and the birds, who quickly sailed into branches and closed their wings over their heads.

I was chilled to the bone, and pulled Caine's coat tight around my shoulders.

There was no way to cover up my anxious fears. I dug a small hole in the ground and filled it with twigs fetched as quickly as possible from the darkening forest outside, which I proceeded to set on fire with a match.

They smoked profusely as they dried out, before the flame caught, giving me an idea for an SOS I'd put out in the morning.

My sleep was riddled with nightmares.


	19. Fog

_**Cullen's POV**_

****Back at their ultra-modern home outside of Forks, the remaining Cullens were getting restless.

"They should have been back by now," Edward paced anxiously through the kitchen. Bella and Alice sat on the couch, speaking quietly to each other, while Esme leaned against the counter sipping tea, staring into space, and Rosalie flipped through channels on the TV they rarely used.

"Alice," Edward exclaimed finally, placing a hand on her shoulder and turning her to face him. "Can you see anything?"

"I've tried, Edward-"

"Try again, will you," he pleaded, resuming his pacing.

Alice shrugged her hands out of Bella's and closed her eyes for a few seconds.

"Anything?" Edward whispered.

"I see a vampire. Male. Bronze hair, black shirt, being beaten to death by another vampire, female, black hair, extremely aggravated," she mumbled hotly.

Edward scowled. Alice opened one eye. "Ask me again in a few minutes. These things take time."

He left her alone, occupying himself by hovering over the back of the couch, kneading Bella's shoulders with stony hands.

"They're in the forest," she stated, finally, opening her eyes.

"The forest? Why?" Esme set down her glass and joined the group in the living room.

"They're looking for someone. The Volturi are hunting, too."

"Are they together?"

"No, but they're both hunting the same someone, a human, I think.."

"A _human?_ _Why_?" Rosalie inserted miserly.

Alice thought for a moment, rising from her cushion and fluttering to the window. "The Volturi think that the human is a vampire, maybe, I don't know," she admitted, furrowing her brow in confusion. "Carlisle isn't certain."

"Who gets to him first?" Bella asked.

"Not sure. It looks like they meet again later, sometime tomorrow afternoon. I think they were arguing about something, but I didn't see the boy."

"Well, at least we know when to expect them home," Rosalie resumed pressing the button on the remote.

Esme snatched the device away. "We should go," she started. "Alice, would you be willing to stay here with Bella?"

Alice nodded, but Bella hopped out of her seat. "You guys can stop treating me with kid gloves," she shot defensively before turning to Esme. "I know I'm new to this and everything, but I want to help."

Edward, still lost in thought, gazed up at his love with unburdened eyes.

Esme scrutinized her for a few moments before smiling gently.

"That's settled then. Shall we go?"

---

_**Eisley POV**_

__When we were kids, Caine and I used to build secret forts. We must have built hundreds of secret forts, all over the house, all over Chicago. Most of them were pathetic, ramshackle things, but there were a few token ones, such as the massive tent we'd constructed in the living room of the uppermiddle-class house we shared with our parents: beneath his spaceman bedsheets and my geometrically patterned duvet, dappled by the kaleidoscopic colors of a disco ball, tucked between us as we munched ham sandwiches and told each other stories (his adventure tales far more interesting than anything my three-year-old mind could produce), we felt connected.

One of the best, I think, was the hallow tree in which he built a nicely-reinforced hut, complete with a tire swing made from a tube of rubber he rolled to the farthest corner of the park all the way from the junkyard. He never let our parents be involved, though I'm sure they knew what he was doing when he asked for money and then left a receipt from the hardware store on the kitchen counter for nails and wood. Honestly, I saw more of Caine than I did of my parents. I figure they must have trusted him with my protection, thus, they left us alone.

Another, his personal favorite, he orchestrated beneath the Chicago Skyway Bridge. I have never been there. He said he would take me the minute I was old enough, coordinated enough to manage limping out on the wires to sit in the flat concrete space beneath it, brave enough to ignore the hundred-foot drop into the river below.

When I would wake up in the middle of the night crying, my brother would be the first person in my room, usually, and if he wasn't, I didn't settle down until he stepped through the door, told mom it was okay, he'd make sure I went back to sleep, and sat down next to me on the bed, and said to me these things about the Bridge.

The lopsided depression caused by his weight on the mattress became familiar to me as nightly routine. His smell – the aroma of laundered bedsheets and faintly sweet licorice. His sounds – the light padding of socks on hard wood toward my little body lying in bed, the whisper of a hand carding through mussed brown hair. These things became my points of orbit in the world, and Caine was my satellite.

He'd say to me, _Emmy, hush. You'll wake the whole neighborhood. _

He wasn't poetic with words, my brother Caine. It was the way he created things, or made them _seem_ created, the way he'd say something that made no sense to my parents or anybody but himself, as if he were lightyears ahead of us in the evolution of things: so matter-of-factly, and so in awe of everything but himself. He always made sure I was at my best, doing my best, teaching me the world with no regard to the way he looked or felt, unkempt and melancholy.

When I was older, and we were living in our cardboard box, the last secret we'd ever keep together, I began to wonder about the forts, why they were built, why they never lasted.

Somehow I think Caine wanted to get away from the world by creating his own, because he was insecure or felt unsafe, but it was _into_ the world he took me, personal field trips up and down the streets of Chicago, Mom and Dad trailing absently behind us, window-shopping, while my brother explained to me the complex simplicity of the universe. Well, the universe _I_ had a concept of: there was Chicago, there was me, and there was him, him being the Sun, Chicago being the solar system, and me being the planet farthest from the Sun, small and weak, but held in place by its gravitational pull, grounded.

My satellite, too. He said he would be anything I wanted, though I was three and too young to respond.

I don't think Caine wanted _away_ from the world. He just wanted it to last.

_Anything I wanted._

I wanted him back. I wanted him back! I WANT HIM BACK!

----

I awoke with a jolt, the icy spray of the waterfall shocking me into awareness, making me gasp for breath. I felt like I had just run a marathon and finished dead last, forced to endure the grueling agony of a rapid heartbeat on top of the swollen ache in my quavering stomach, sinking fast, a chunk of lead in a pool of butter.

If I had time to speculate on the finer points of 'coping,' I might have concluded I wasn't doing too well with it. How long had I been thinking consciously? Based on the sagging weight on my shoulders it wasn't difficult to assume I hadn't slept as long or as deeply as it felt like I should have.

I rolled over groggily, pressing my hands into the dirt, saturated with a mist billowing in from the falls, and called my dog, stupid to think he might have heard me through the blitz of water, like the sound of hushed whispers mingling with the staccato of machine gun fire. Arms outstretched, I ducked out of the enclave and into the foggy outdoors.

A humid midst had settled close to the ground, held down by the tent of trees, blurring my vision and turning my clothes sticky with muggy water, an even balance to the temperature, still hovering somewhere between nippy and Antarctica. Even so, my head was spinning and extremely warm to the touch.

"Hamlet?" I rasped.

He bounded out of the fog toward me, ready to go.

"We n-need the backpack," I coughed, teeth chattering.

Before I could take any steps back to where I'd laid it, he disappeared again and reappeared a moment later, the straps snagged between his teeth.

Dazed, I shook myself violently to clear my head, shaking loose a beehive of migraine spasms, which bounced around my cranium like rocks in a glass jar. Hamlet's barking rang through this jumble, and I staggered after him along the riverside.


	20. Flicker

**Author's Note: I have recently finished reading Breaking Dawn, and realize that, in various ways (some minor, some major) the plotline of _Eisley_ is slightly off. I will continue writing this particular story as is, but in the future, to rectify the new information I've absorbed, all other _Eisley_ stories will be in full accordance with Breaking Dawn, including Renesmee's presence and Bella's abilities and the tense relationships between the Cullen's and the Volturi (obviously not so much here, but you get the drift), etc. **

_**Carlisle's POV**_

__Though walking wasn't an act at all unusual for me, I could tell after a few hours of pacing through the forest that its awkward sensation was taking its toll on Jasper and Emmett. My youngest son grew more jittery by the minute, itching to run, but knowing that we'd lose the scent if we didn't take it slow. Emmett was a few yards behind us, feeling a bit like a third wheel, as his brutish strength and oversized muscles weren't a necessity in this particular hunt.

At least, not yet.

I lingered between them, inhaling as many times per minute as I could without overflowing my nostrils with the stagnant smell of 'wet dog,' as Emmett had so gracefully put it.

We continued this way as we had been doing for hours, through night and into the early hours of the morning, before the rest of our coven arrived on the scene, agitated, but eager to assist.

I filled them in.

We split up across either side of the the river – Jasper, Alice, and Bella continued on the West side with me, while Esme, Rosalie, Emmett, and Edward (Bella adamantly rebuked Edward's insistence she not feel coerced to be apart from him) patrolled the East.

The fog grew heavier as we progressed. Had Jasper not thrown a hand up to stop us dead in our tracks, I might have slipped off the edge of a steep drop. The universe seemed to fall silent in anticipation of what he was about to disclose, as if it were some big secret. But he continued on, shaking his head, enveloped in his tracking. I glanced at Esme's silhouette, swearing I caught the thin edges of her mouth turning upwards.

In the distance, the crash of rushing water could be heard. Jasper's trained ears overflowed with it, drowning out his other senses, and in a snap our search party experienced a heightened emotion of panic.

"Jasper?" I spoke gently. He peered through the mist, unresponsive.

"The scent is getting fainter," he breathed, turning to look at me. "Oh, sorry..."

Eight unanimous sighs bubbled in the fog.

"I've lost it, too." I whispered.

"It's the fog," Emmett hedged, a hint of frustration in his gruff voice.

"The river, too," Jasper delegated.

"Hold off a minute," Bella spoke, taking a few cautious steps forward. "Do you hear that?"

We listened, though the forest was hardly silent. Through the camaraderie of shifting leaves, tinny waterfalls, and the occasional rustle of wings, it was impossible to discern, at first glance, anything out of place.

But, as I focused more on the background noise, I found myself drawn to footsteps – twigs snapping toward the left bank, a few yards away.

_Volturi_.

Edward's ebony gaze bored into mine as he listened to the word bounce around my skull.

A unanimous front, we drifted back, waiting. On the opposite bank, Jane and Demetri sniffed the air.

_Do they know we're here?_ I thought.

Edward caught this, and nodded once.

_Intentions?_

He entwined his hands loosely, creating a cage with his fingers, and then pointed to his sharpened canines.

Jasper nudged me. He had the scent again. Without so much noise as crackled leaf, he, Alice, Bella, and I retreated into the trees to follow the river from higher ground.

This was becoming less of an act of reconnaissance and more of a rescue mission with each passing second. Alice must have seen that coming, too, because she stopped in her tracks for a few seconds, eyes shut tight, as if against a storm. When they opened, she seemed utterly horrified.

_"What?"_ Jasper mouthed.

"There's a waterfall," she articulated slowly, quietly, "and in about a minute and a half our game's going to fall over it."

Shock crossed Bella's face. I clenched my teeth together, looking around frantically.

"The Volturi would have heard that," Jasper nudged.

"Is it a vampire?" I hissed.

"Can't tell," Alice replied sadly.

_Edward, we are moving along the river. Hurry. _I could only hope he was paying attention.

The four of us crouched, ready to run, to bolt through the trees like lightening.

Without warning, the human appeared through the fog on the opposite bank, shoulders sagging with the weight of soaked clothes and exhaustion, an equally fatigued hound trailing beside her.

My arm flew out to block my family from moving. Across the river, the others froze, and the Volturi closed in.

A swallow shook free of its nest and abandoned the tree directly above me, snapping a twig.

The dog's eyes were on our huddled shadows in an instant, nose tasting the air.

The child raised her head, green eyes, aware, and met my gaze.

_**Eisley POV**_

__Trudging through the rocky shore of the river had sapped whatever strength I had left. I resigned myself to the out-of-body experience of physical withdrawal, allowing my appendages to slowly numb themselves against the cold air, exhaustion flooding through me, creating the illusion that I was floating through the mist.

My head continued to burn horribly, and my ears throbbed, making my eyes water with a salty muck I could not wipe away without pushing dirt into my lids.

I felt dead and gone already, or at least as if I were pacing through purgatory.

My hand seemed to swell against its bandage, so I unwrapped it.

The gash was connected by puncture wounds that arced from the flesh between my thumb and forefinger around my wrist, and were just as bloody and unclotted as they were seconds after Hamlet had bitten me.

I had little time to ponder this as my head began to spin and he halted, glancing around warily until his trained sight came to rest on a particular spot in the darkened trees.

Squinting, I peered in that direction.

A silhouette of a man made itself clear. His amber eyes glowed through the shadows and an image of Caine, standing center stage in my ransacked apartment, swept through my mind.

I registered the thin, whoosing sound of the air parting above me too late.

My face hit the dirt as I was tackled to the ground by a man, snarling, growling fiercely, his cloak creating a dark wall around me. Hamlet's barking shattered the fog, but in that same instant, I was free again, and stumbled out from beneath my attacker, who was now _being_ attacked by another figure, a man, leaner, with wild bronze hair and a crisp linen shirt.

Hamlet and I broke from the fray and blasted down the river bank, the mist parting like the red sea parted for Moses, until the air was abruptly clear and light, the trees no longer obscured around us, and the frantic sound of footfall was all I could hear for the next few seconds.

Until my attackers, too, became part of the scenery, circling around me like satellites drawn to a lonely little planet. _Satellites. _

My mind always picked the worst times to wander. I shouldn't have ever assumed I could outrun my followers, shouldn't have dropped my guard so almost infinitesimal altitudes by thinking of Caine again, but poor word choice had led me to his face again. _Satellites_. I could think of no better way to describe my current situation.

I tripped. Product of not minding my surroundings.

I skidded to a stop on damp grass, and got to my feet quickly. Everything was quiet, oddly.

Where had they gone?

I was back in my body again, suddenly aware, somehow, of myself, and yet, my muscles weren't contracting rebelliously against the burn that _should_ have been drop-kicking me to my knees right then.

The heat on my head had either dissipated or spread throughout the rest of my flesh, because I couldn't feel anything except cognizant. Completely cognizant.

Silence.

Even the river, its rapids coursing, rushing a few short feet away from where I stood, did not invade my ears.

I heard nothing, I smelt nothing, nor did I feel the pulsating, soft creature brushing against my legs.

I saw everything as if seeing it for the first time, so clear.

This strangeness ended as soon as it had begun. What seemed like only seconds later, it wiped its hands of my pathetic self, and my senses rushed back in a blur of sound. The water roared vociferously, leaning in closer as if to rise up and swallow me.

Then I realized I was falling, and I sunk into the water, which quieted the world again until I was yanked back up by the air in my lungs. My head broke the surface, I gasped for air, my awareness smacked me in the face, shocking me into a position of panic. I heard a crash, a spray of water, and Hamlet was at my side as we were blasted along by the current, forceful, unmerciful.

I went under. My ears prickled and popped as freshwater flooded them.

Rocks lined the riverbed, and we bounced along like a ball in a ping-pong machine. My head throbbed again, and I was lost, inhaling water because I couldn't tell the difference between being above and being below the surface: everyplace I put my head the atmosphere was stifling.

I was spun around by another crushing blow off a rock, and saw them behind me. Nine or ten figures, some of them women, including the little woman who appeared no more older than I, filing rapidly down the riverbank, neck in neck.

Hamlet yipped alarmingly, choking on the water.

Unable to spin myself around, I gaped over my shoulders. The rocks thickened around the edges of the river, and all that lay before us was a mass of trees and navy sky. I didn't fight the current. A second before we careened over the precipice, a hand extended from the west bank, and I met the amber eyes again, this time seeing the face: pale skin, pale hair, strong, lean frame clothed in blue jeans and a gray coat, soft features, every one of them centered around his amber eyes, in which I saw no malice, or intentions of pain.

I dropped, propelled outward, arching into the air with the force of the water, air whizzing upwards, wrapping around my body like a cellophane sheet, bending me in two.

I hit the water again at this angle, slicing through the surface, a torpedo, a rocket shooting through a supermassive black hole, swallowing me into its depths and taking my consciousness hostage.

I flickered between floating and sinking. Air, and the crushing ache of drowning.

My heart fluttered restlessly, gently, and my lungs inflated with air and dirt. I gasped, coughing, on my knees, head hung toward the earth beneath me, my body sagging and lurching, sagging and lurching as I vomited bile onto the shore of the dark blue lagoon. My arms buckled at the elbows and I tipped sideways in an effort to avoid the mess I'd just created, slamming into the ground with a thud, splayed out in an unnatural way. My fingers closed around something soft and soggy. Hamlet's pink tongue curled around them, and I faded into the drowning feeling, sinking farther and farther away from a place of conscious thought.


	21. Capture

_**Carlisle POV**_

Jane had shown me photos of the vampire boy they'd been hunting: those mostly blurry things shoved at me in a yellow envelope chronicled only a short four-year span of time, from human to vampire – living, to the Turn. The few color images I'd seen displayed his boyish features, definitely edging on manhood, but with a tint of youth highlighted in his blue eyes. The 'after' pictures, after the transformation, were of the same child, simply paler, more golden-eyed, and starved, desperate.

These eyes that had met mine opposite the riverbank were reminiscent of burnished jade, and the features framing the face of them were softer than a boy's would be, though just as fixed, and just as dead as the boy's. Though in awe of the misunderstanding, I could easily see how the Volturi thought, simply by looking, that this child was the violator of their laws. The same mussed mop of brown hair adorned her head, and her facial structure was very similar.

I had little time to dwell on this. Before Alice's predicted minute-and-a-half was spent, I had failed to stop the human girl from tumbling over the waterfall and colliding with the murky water some sixty yards beneath our altitude.

"You nearly had him, Carlisle," Jane mused, and I noticed her for the first time, standing beside me in the same position as I, leaning over the precipice, gazing at the surface of the water, praying a pair of flailing arms would rise to the surface.

"She is not your vampire, Jane," I turned to her, just as the rest of the party was gathering around.

"_She?" _Emmett murmured, clearly in awe.

"She." I affirmed forcefully. "Her eyes are green, her face is that of a human child's."

"A trick," Demetri huffed.

"You think a vampire would allow himself to fall into a river and over a waterfall?" Edward returned in a tone that bordered between sarcastic and stating the obvious.

"An elaborate ruse, I'm sure, to throw the Volturi off the true scent of the vampire. As I said, Carlisle," Jane turned her ebony eyes to leer at me, "none of us here can attest to this one's abilities."

"How can you be so blind, Jane?" I advanced, but received no answer but the brief gust of wind left in her wake of a sprint. In a moment's notice, my coven and I joined her at the edge of the lagoon.

"When did the Volturi decide to engage in wild goose chases? The boy you are looking for is already dead!" By the end of this, my typically calm and rational voice had escalated to a yell, and, for once, Jasper made no efforts to stem the swell.

Once again, I received no reply. Jane fell to one knee and scrutinized the child. The dog shifted closer, but did not bark. In my peripheral vision, I noticed Edward's eyes narrow, and Bella hanging back, for she had caught the scent that Jane must have indulged, the proof.

Demetri mumbled something inaudible, and Jane extended a tentative hand.

Three things happened in rapid succession. The child stirred, shifting uneasily, much like a baby does in sleep, and in the recollection of her surroundings her heart began to pump blood faster through her veins. The dog recoiled and snapped at Jane's fingers, on his feet in a flash. Jane's extended hand snapped in a sickening crunch, so she extended the second, a gleam of fury in her glare.

The child on her feet with unnatural speed, and on her knees again just as quickly as Jane's mental excruciation unfurled her spinal strength; she crumpled into a fetal position.

"Jane!" I interjected mightily.

Before she released the reflexive assault she'd cast on the child, her golden eyes met mine in a fashion that seemed almost _apologetic_, though her clenched teeth and stone-cast face would never have betrayed such a secret.

**_Eisley POV_**

I've heard people say that right before a person dies, they see their life flash before them, like some final, futile attempt to re-experience the happiness and joy of life before the darkness envelops it.

My mind went straight to darkness, disposed of all the usual formalities of death as I understood them. I had very few happy memories to my name, and the ones I _did _have I did not want to dwell on, because they always led back to the unhappy ones.

With the few seconds I figured I'd have left, once the pain hit, I might have considered that I'd never experienced worse, not even the night in the apartment, when I'd felt its effects, _these_ effects, the first time. But I couldn't lie to myself. The only memory that flashed before my eyes did so in loop, over and over again, a remembrance of the worst pain I'd ever experienced, a pain that put _this_ pain to shame, made it feel like pure relief, pure, agonizing relief, relief that I might die and everything would end, would cease to exist, my shame would vanish.

I drove that knife into my brother's heart. His ribcage cracked, his sternum twisted awkwardly against the other bones, and in his very core, I imagined the sound of his heart ceasing to beat, pumping slower and slower until blood bottled up in his veins, became stagnant, and then fueled the fire that proceeded to burn his body to ashes.

And I did it again.

And again.

Looping, over and over.

While I waited to die.

**_Cullen's POV_**

****Demetri hoisted the child up by the collar of her thin, gray coat, scrunching his nose in disdain. For her part, she did no more than restrain the dog, though, in her condition, it would have been difficult to do much else. With both of her hands tightly woven into his harness, he seemed to relax.

Jane righted herself, facing the girl, whose breath hitched in her throat and came out in shallow wheezes, her entire frame shaking against the chill and the wet clothes.

"She has his scent," Jane spoke plainly, and Carlisle approached.

"She is wearing his coat," he explained, his serious tone dripping with a barely noticeable hint of superiority.

Aggravated, Jane whipped the yellow folder out of her cloak for the third time, and rifled its contents, removing the photo of their vampire, wearing the coat.

The papers were slammed to the earth.

The girl gazed down at them in shocked apprehension, her head lolling toward the ground.

"Caine," she expired roughly, coughing. "Caine."

Jane snagged the front of her shirt and dragged her head upwards.

Behind Carlisle, Alice shifted, touching his arm just as it flexed to move.

"Wait," she whispered.

Carlisle, hesitant, turned to Edward, who nodded, and Bella, who tapped her head with one finger, indicating the shield was up and operating.

Jasper's calming abilities filtered through the group.

Eisley swallowed back a lump of saliva and bile.

"How do you know this boy?" Jane spat, ever-so-gently.

"My brother," she spat back through clenched teeth. "He's dead."

"How?"

Eisley hesitated, her eyes finding Carlisle's again before brimming with salty tears, and from her core she let loose a gut-wrenching sob, a half-scream, half-grunt of anger and sorrow, but she did not struggle against the chokehold.

"She killed him," Edward whispered.

"The body you saw burned in the alley was _him_, not this child," Carlisle reasoned. "Let her go, she has committed no crime."

Jane ignored him. "What did you brother tell you after he came back?"

**_Eisley POV_**

My adam's apple struggled against the lack of air entering my throat, and my inhalations relocated through my nostrils, forcing my breath through smaller openings and keeping my voice tight. Somehow, I was able to articulate an answer. The words were like chunks of glass sliding up through my raw throat.

"Something bad was going...to...happen." I choked, wrapping my sweaty fingers tighter around the leather of Hamlet's collar.

"Edward, would you please?" the one called Jane invited to the one called Edward, who stood in the back. I was released, and my body seemed to deflate. My forehead burned again, sweat dripped through my hair and down my neck, despite the icy temperatures. My legs felt about the consistency of jelly, and as this boy Edward approached (he looked no more than seventeen or eighteen) a pang of fear struck my insides.

"I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!" I screamed, struggling against the vicegrip of the man pinning me to the pine tree. Any moment, _Edward _would unsheathe some weapon to kill me, or wrap his pale fingers around my throat to finish the job. I hadn't run fast enough, I hadn't gotten away, and I was going to pay for it.

_"Jasper,"_ one of them whispered. My eyes trailed upwards reflexively, and I saw that it was that pale, compassionate face again, who had tried to save my life in the river, only to be audience to those who would kill me, apparently, and yet, a slightly _relaxing_ convolution of calmness washed over me, clouding my head with its foam.

"Doing my best, Carlisle," the one called Jasper replied, and I caught the classic Southern drawl.

_Carlisle_. That was his name.

My vision of Carlisle was obscured briefly as a hand passed through my line of sight.

"Relax," Edward offered, not gently, but not harshly, either. His hands hovered on either side of my head. I was in a trance.

_**Cullen's POV**_

__Edward had always found his art of mind-reading easier to master among individual subjects the closer he was to them, in proximity and relationship. As the latter did him no service here, he settled for proximity, raising his hands in an effort to close as much distance as possible without smothering the girl.

Rosalie almost chuckled at the petrified look on her face, but Emmett shushed her. Bella peered around Alice's shoulder, watching, her expression one of piqued interest. Jasper was focused, his mind occupied with keeping the mood of the company around him steady on _CALM_.

Esme wrapped an arm around Carlisle's.

Edward closed his eyes, and opened the doors of his mind.

All at once, he was assaulted with a deluge of noise: images, sounds, and emotions, all jumbled, as if whipped into a vortex and then left spinning, bashing against the walls of her skull. Through her eyes, he caught snatches of a story told of a...secret fort beneath a bridge? A boy, blue-eyed, laughing, a fire, a house burned to the ground, Fear, Worry.

A cardboard box in an alley. A Seattle shopping mall.

Eisley shut her eyes.

Edward probed the recesses of the mental beehive, searching for knowledge of a vampire.

He was met with more emotional Terror, newspaper headlines dated four years apart, a library, and the boy, again.

A boy with golden eyes, the same boy, but there he was, a vampire.

Edward pushed this memory, stretched it. He found himself beneath a hollow tree, hunched over, listening to the boy speak.

_"He...roughed me up pretty badly," he related, staring at his finger still doodling in the dirt. That seemed like a suspiciously succinct summary, but I kept my mouth shut and let him tell the story. The man, or whoever, had left him lying in the gutter, nearly unconscious. _

_"I thought I was going to die," he defined, chortling quietly, as if he had told some inside joke. "There was blood everywhere."_

_When a passerby discovered his body in the morning and called the cops, he was rushed to the nearest emergency room and quickly labeled a possible survivor of the nighttime slayings, but doctors were uncertain he'd still be alive by sundown. He suffered a broken arm, massive internal bruising, and severe clotting around a gaping wound in his neck. _

_He tugged on his collar with two fingers, revealing a jagged, curved scar near his jugular. _

_"It wasn't healing properly," he breathed, "but the doctor got the clots cleared out and gave me lots of transfusions when I became conscious again. He said I had lost over 70% of my body's capacity for blood, and had been hooked to the machine just in time to keep me from shriveling into a prune."_

_I grimaced. "What happened?"_

_"Well, I'm here, aren't I?"_

_"Uh, yeah, but aren't you kind of skipping a big part in the middle there? You know, between then and now?" I spun my index finger in impatient circles. "How'd you get out of the hospital? Why did they think you were dead?"_

_"Like I said – they screwed up."_

Edward took this as an explanation of the night he was attacked. Everything became hazy, evidence of a distracted mind, and, for the moment, who could blame her? Like a movie reel jerking on the line, the images sped up, skipped ahead.

_"You still needed protecting!"_

_"From what? You weren't there!"_

_"Dammit," he growled, burying his face in his hands and screaming in frustration. "I couldn't put you in danger, I couldn't," he rocked back and forth in his seated position. _

_I faltered. "Caine, you've got to make sense."_

_"I can't. Not now. That's all I can say."_

Edward allowed his hands to fall back to their respective sides, and he backed away, facing Jane, who looked at him expectantly.

"Nothing," he answered. "He didn't say anything about his condition. He stopped at an explanation of his injuries, and denied her answers to any other questions. She has a remarkable cerebral capacity."

"Mmm," Jane mused.

"She is not a threat to our existence," Carlisle interrupted.

Eisley might have been shocked to hear that her attackers thought _she_ was a threat to _them_, but she hadn't heard.

She slumped against the tree, scraping bark loose, fading into the pitch of unconsciousness again, which nobody noticed, except Esme, who was the only one still looking at her. Hamlet barked frantically.

"Carlisle," Esme nudged him, and he rushed to the child, pulling her up from her contorted position, crumpled in a heap at the base of the pine trunk. Demetri released her.

"Emmett," Carlisle commanded gingerly, and the buff boy stepped forward, allowing Carlisle to place the girl in his cradled arms. Hamlet weaved in between the twenty legs of the party and plopped down on his haunches next to Rosalie, who cringed and pinched her nose between two fingers. The dog seemed oddly content with the entire situation as it was turning out.

An exchange was made.

"She needs medical attention," Carlisle offered harshly. "She has committed no offense against the Volturi. Let me take her to my home. I will care for her, and make sure she gets back to where she came from."

He spoke honestly.

"Please do," Jane sighed, disgusted with the whole ordeal.

Carlisle nodded his appreciation, and turned to leave, his family tossing last, piercing glares at Jane and Demetri before breaking into sprints and disappearing into the trees.

Only Edward hung back, waiting for Carlisle, who was recalled by Jane.

"We will return in a few days, Carlisle," she warned. "To make sure she is still as dumb to our secret as Edward says she is."

He nodded once. "We would not violate our way of life, Jane." Carlisle turned to Edward.

_Are they sincere?_ He thought.

Edward nodded.

"Until then, Jane."

Carlisle and Edward departed.


	22. Flatline

_**Carlisle POV**_

_My family and I absconded to the house and began preparations to treat the human for whatever injuries she may have sustained, constructing the makeshift, unorthodox hospital room where the living room furniture had been only minutes before. My friends in high places on the medical tree probed me not with questions regarding my need for saline drip bags and IV stands. Most of the equipment we had in a closet I kept stocked for any occasion a Cullen was hurt, which wasn't often. Speaking of them, by their dejectedly annoyed expressions, the six youngest members of my coven made it clear they didn't appreciate the situation._

_ I had expected hostility from Rosalie. Jasper still had trouble controlling his thirst, thus I allowed leeway on his part. Bella's caution wasn't unnecessary, if considered in the correct light. Edward had always been a melancholic, sullen individual (though these low moods, over the past two days, seemed more characteristic of teenage angst than adult brooding.) Emmett kept his distance, like always. _

_Alice always had trouble staying away from places where she might be able to bring cheer, but this time, her cold-shouldered reaction spun me for a loop. She practically shunned the entire ordeal, and I knew the reason. She had already watched the child die. _

_And she knew there was only one thing we could do about that. _

-----

She remained unconscious for sixty-three hours, seven minutes, and forty-nine seconds, including the six-minute run from the middle of Nowhere Woods back to the house, and the fifteen minutes it took us to organize the micro-hospital. I was reminded absently of the last time it had been used to sustain human life, and shortly after, how that human life had ended. I never regretted Bella's admission into our family, only wished it had not been under such excruciatingly grueling circumstances.

Unfortunately, I had blown the rescue mission out of the water. She was stable, but her heartbeat wouldn't slow, as precisely rapid as the beat of a stick dragged along a metal-barred fence. Rosalie had no trouble telling me that I'd become too involved, that we should have stayed out of it, or at least not _all_ gone on the wild goose chase through the labyrinth of trees in the middle of the night, or that I shouldn't have let the dirty dog in the house. I expected the rebuke, and offered none in return, but continued to hover over the child's bedside, watching her sleep, fitfully uncomfortable. As for the dog, I had strong notions I wouldn't be able to keep him outside and expect him to be quiet about it.

It wasn't until Rosalie stopped jarring me and turned to leave that Esme actually expressed an opinion, and it didn't come in words. Her hand came to rest on my shoulder and I glanced up. Her topaz eyes, glossy, watched Rosalie disappear up the stairs before turning to mine. She didn't frown upon my overactively compassionate actions, but she didn't smile, either. Just gazed at me sadly, as if warning me not to get too attached.

Was I attached? Edward must have seen that, too.

It wasn't often I went out of my way to save innocent humans from the Volturi.

_Well, it's not often that the Volturi go on manic hunts for innocent humans. The get their food...takeout._

I suppose if I could save every human from less-than-polite vampires, I would.

_Good luck turning the entire vampire population into 'vegetarians.'_

I attributed my behavior to an impulse, an instinctive reaction to a dangerous scenario, neither of which I needed to defend. The sooner we got her treated, awake, and out the door, the better. First order of business after stabilizing her vitals was to find out who the mysterious little stranger was.

-----

Edward, Jasper, and Bella spent these short hours of our patient's unconsciousness going back and forth between Edward's bedroom, whose shelves were full of books on human psychology, and my study, where Emmett lounged over a laptop, researching the Seattle killings and old newspaper headlines. Jane hadn't given us a name to go on, or even a point of origin. All in information we had came from the girl's earlier testimony that the vampire they'd hunted was her brother, and if I heard her correctly through the coughing fit, his name was Caine.

Jasper and Edward, eager to get out of the house, took a day-trip to Seattle to see the crime scene, the smoldering alley ticker-taped over by confused cops, and the rubbled apartment building, now condemned. I was more grateful than either of my sons knew, for their efforts. Alice and Bella took turns keeping this line of communication open. Rosalie sulked next to Emmett, who didn't look any happier than she did, just typically lighthearted.

I ached to join them, only doing so after Esme noticed my un-vampiric squirming and told me she'd keep a close pair of eyes on my patient. I began triangulating between the bedroom, the study, and the hospital bed.

After forty-eight hours or so of intense research, Alice alerted me to a call incoming from Seattle, leaning over the railing of the stairs and calling down to me in my study. A few seconds later, my cell phone buzzed on my desk. Jasper reported he'd been following a lead Emmett had discovered in _Washington Weekly_. Emmett, hunched over the coffee table across the room, overheard and held up a finger, scrounging through paper. He exacted one from the middle of the mess and slid it onto my desk. I scanned the article (under the glaring black headline it wasn't difficult to find), and out of the jumble a name appeared.

According to the newspapers, Caine Andrew Monahan was seventeen, and a native Chicagoan who escaped from an inter-city orphanage with his sister_., _Eisley Martel Monahan.

Jasper's call pinpointed the location of this orphanage.

"Should we head that way, Carlisle?" Edward interjected.

"No, Edward, that's good enough. I'll see you two at home." I slid the phone shut.

I let her name ripen in my mouth for a minute. Eisley. It wasn't that I was so fascinated by a human, just the mystery, and figuring it out, like a puzzle, like a doctor who needs to understand a malady, or a disease. I scratched that metaphor. I didn't think of the girl as a disease to be understood. But she did fascinate me.

Already she'd begun to recover. After a few stretched hours her heart rate began to slow to a normal tempo, and her awareness brought her close to rousing a few times. I studied her as carefully as I could without being invasive, treating her injuries (two cracked ribs, a broken knuckle, a concussion, a blackened eye, and some major bruises and cuts) with as much care as possible. I soothed the bite-gash on her hand with an aloe gel and wrapped it gently. It hadn't healed, so I assumed it was a relatively recent injury. Her fever cooled quickly, though I had not taken any action to suppress it, as most fevers were virus-related, and there was nothing I could have done.

All in all, the progress was nicely advancing. Actually, a little too quickly.

I yellowbooked the number for the orphanage and gave them a call. The conversation was long considering most of the words spoken were spoken by the frantic director of the place, who had kept up with the story and naturally assumed Eisley was long dead. I told her I was a doctor (wasn't _lying_) and treated Eisley for a massive concussion, and I needed her files faxed to me for medical reasons (wasn't _really_ lying, just hoping she'd send the whole thing without questions.) She rambled about confidentiality policy, we got into a heated argument (which, for me, is an octave _short_ of yelling in frustration: I never do) and she read me what little there was on her medical records before asking when she could send a social worker to pick her up and fly her back to Chicago.

I replied that I'd take care of the arrangements when she was healed, and hung up.

I slumped in my chair, running my hands over my face, somehow exhausted, wondering if being with this woman was what the kid needed out of whatever was left of her childhood.

A few more hours dragged by, the minutes ticking onward, obnoxiously sluggish. Edward and Jasper returned. Esme took the girls out hunting. Emmett retired to his and Rosalie's room to exercise his dexterity on various video game controllers. I remained in the living room, seating on a pale chair, poring over the newspapers in my left hand, sipping a cup of coffee in my right.

Before I had been Turned, I found coffee to be one of the most vile substances on the planet. It was bitter, and nasty by all meanings of the word. After, after the taste buds had been altered to accommodate the strong taste of blood and otherwise bloody food sources, I discovered coffee to be sweet and pleasant, nicely warm. _Lovely_, I'd venture to say, when Esme added a stick of cinnamon or peppermint, such trademark tastes that were so strong they couldn't be rejected.

As I busied myself in my more _human_ thoughts, my supply of sugary goodness diminished my mug, and I stepped out for a minute to pour another cup in the kitchen.

I only stepped out for a _minute. Less_ than a minute. I knew how many seconds it took to get to the kitchen and back, and it wasn't many, not as fast as I sprinted up the stairs. Of _course, _though, as luck would have it, Wrong would choose to go the one _minute_ Eisley was unattended.

She was a magnet for danger, as the last few days had made obvious.

I had just poured the coffee and turned for the hallway when Alice blasted through my field of vision, catching me in her peripheral vision and then skidding back.

"She's going to flatline, Carlisle!" She shouted across the narrow corridor.

I slid the mug onto the granite counter and we were down the stairs in an instant, no questions asked.

"How long?" I asked as we reached the bed. I rolled Eisley from her side to her back and pushed my ear to her flat chest, pulling clear tubes and other cords out of the way with my hands. Her heart beat faintly, and the monitor reflected its steady arches in a green neon line across the black screen.

"A couple of minutes. Right after you inject her with your venom."

I straightened up, suddenly floored. "Alice, your visions are subjective," I whispered, almost as if posing the statement as a question.

"Only based on the decisions we make."

We hadn't much time. I ripped my glassy eyes away from her all-knowing gaze. As a vampire I wouldn't have ever forced an innocent child, especially one of Eisley's age, into the monstrousness of vampirism. But the _only-human_ part of me had _considered _it, if only to escape return to the crappy orphanage and whatever other ugly sides of life she'd have to go through: foster families, adoptive families, migration, the pain of detachment from her brother.

And yet, obviously, Alice had picked up on my five-second _consideration_ of the concept.

I glanced at her again, and saw that the other members of my family had entered the room, and begun to hover. Esme touched my arm.

"Consider the ramifications."

I did. First, the pact with the Blacks. With Jacob in Alpha charge of revoking the we-remain-neutral-unless-we-turn-another-human clause, I felt safe enough that we'd be clear of any violations of the treaty. Second, if Eisley was going to die, then I wasn't taking a life, but saving it, in the loosest definition. Third, my family. None of them looked particularly happy, but they didn't look upset, either.

The two minutes were nearly spent. I needed to make a decision.

If the heart wasn't beating it couldn't pump the venom through her veins, which left only one other option.

Hamlet brushed against my legs, peering up at me. Just before I made my decision, I caught a glimpse of a crescent-shaped scar jagged across his left shoulder, below his collarbone. It gleamed gently in the white light of the room. My eyes trailed to Bella's hands, resting on the back of the couch. Her scar, the same, reflected the light. Jasper's arms, lined with the marks, did the same. I looked at the dog, who hadn't lost attention.

With renewed vigor, I made my decision.

"Edward, get me the shock pads from the closet. Alice, the venom, please." They rushed off. Esme stood at the foot of the bed for moral support.

This wasn't going to end well. "The rest of you, please leave the room." They knew why. Newborns were not _stable, _and assuming Eisley survived the procedure, I wanted my children to, as well. She wouldn't be like the Immortal Children – she was too old, far to old, but she could never be like an adult vampire. That much I had to take away from her. To be perpetually an adolescent girl was the only way I could save her.

In the few seconds that passed while I waited for Alice and Edward to return, I analyzed the dormant being before me. Eisley's expression betrayed the trauma she'd experienced, oddly calm, seemingly at ease, despite that hint of awkward discomfort in her position, twisted into the sweaty sheets. Her clothes had dried out on the windy run home, and we hadn't time or a supply of clothes her size in which to change her. Still dirty with rainwater and mud, her skin was smooth and warm. Her soft, brown hair stuck up manically in places where she'd pushed it against the pillow.

Her breath came out in shallow heaves.

I glanced hesitantly at Hamlet again, who propped his front paws up on the bed and let his head fall upon them, as if monitoring the situation, getting it under control. On a hunch, I carefully lifted Eisley's bandaged hand from beneath the blankets and unwrapped it. Oozy blood and pus lined the interior. The hand wasn't swollen, just red and irritated. The wound appeared as fresh as the day she got it, which I realized must have been long before I thought.

I shut my mouth tight, and took a tentative sniff.

Vampire venom has a very distinct taste and smell, which I have never been asked to describe and probably never could. To humans, it merely burns the nose, the mouth, the skin, the blood.

Through the putrid smell of infected bodily fluids, I caught this scent. It was incredibly faint, so _not_ there that I almost missed it, and likely would have had Hamlet not shown me his shoulder scar.

I have been a vampire for three centuries, and I have never imagined the possibilities of animal carriers of our venom. Animals could not _become_ vampires, I knew that much. Why hadn't there been more to research on that topic?

Because my family and Tanya's are the only two settled families in the world that do not feed on humans, and the animals we feed on all die. The data pool doesn't exist. Vampires, otherwise, have no reason to attack an animal and not kill it, nor the restraint to leave it alive after it has already been bitten into. It wasn't biologically _impossible _for a dog, I supposed, to _carry_ the venom. It had no effect on animal health.

But could it be transferred?

Eisley's rapid healing process in the early stages of the treatment. How she outrun ten vampires in the middle of the forest at night.

I concluded that the transfer occurred when Hamlet bit Eisley, whenever that was. He must not have hung on very long, however, because Eisley was going to begin deteriorating in a few seconds, if Alice's prediction was correct. A _temporary_ vampire?

No such thing. Vampires were characterized by more than just speed and quick recovery. A temporary experience of the venom's effects was more likely. A breakthrough in our blood-and-guts science, though I doubted that enough of it was left in her system to either help her or interfere with what I was about to do.

I wondered if Hamlet's venom had made any other changes, the ones more typical of vampirism. Eye color, for example, always changes to the burgundy crimson. I was about to check, when Alice blew back in with the needle full of my crystal-clear venom.

I took it quickly. "Edward, keep those close," I indicated to the shock pads. "Alice, have you seen anything else?"

She shook her head sadly.

I took a forlorn look around at my audience and raised the needle – it hovered over her heart, ready to pierce the sternum and do its job.

_Here goes everything_, I shook my head, and the silver strand descended through flesh, bone, and muscle. I pumped it, drained it dry, all of it went in. I released it, recoiling as if I had placed my hand on a burning stoveplate.

Esme yanked it free from her chest, and the heart monitor went into a frenzy, the neon line increasing in amplitude and decreasing in wavelength, until it became an orange alert line, and then a red danger line, and then collapsed into a single flat strand, a never-ending _beep._

"Edward, the shock pads!" I shouted, rushing back to the bedside. I hooked them to the life support, charged at 300 volts, and pressed them to her unprotected chest. Her body bucked with the first jolt of electricity, but her heart didn't so much as stutter out a few syllables.

I shot her again, and again, raising the voltage, to no avail. The venom, however excruciating, could not save her unless it was being carried through the veins by blood. On the fourth shock, a long shot, the organ responded. A blip on the monitor screen turned all our faces to it simultaneously. A faint pulse erupted, and held itself.

I looked down. Hamlet had his face pressed to Eisley's forehead, and if a dog could be deep in thought, his present expression was what it would have looked like.

"We haven't got much time," I stated futilely. "The heart won't hold long enough for the venom to spread."

Esme, Edward, and Alice all understood what that meant.

"I've killed her already, Esme," I whispered. "I have to."

She nodded, and they backed away, bracing themselves.

I placed the shock pads on the roll-away, and wiped my hands on my linen shirt, running my tongue over my lips in an effort to reel in all the control I've ever gained. Hamlet opened his eyes and met mine again. I saw that they were dark blue, and flashing with warnings, warnings to keep myself in check.

With a final glare, he pushed away from the pillows and stepped back.

I felt every muscle in my body coil, as if tensing for the spring, an instinctive reaction learned through the hunt.

_Please don't let this turn into something it's not_.

If I could feel physical reactions to mental stress, I would have noticed the swell of ache rising in my gut.

The heart monitor blipped onward, and I capitalized on my last chance to save something I wasn't sure why I cared about.

I went for the jugular, a rumbling growl escaping my teeth as they penetrated the soft neck flesh, filling the bowl of my lower jaw with burning, crimson blood, smooth, and reality-inhibiting. I didn't have to linger there long before the heart rate sped up again, under pressure, and Eisley opened her bloodshot eyes.


	23. Open

_**Eisley POV**_

__Again, I was catching flashes of things, little glimpses of the world around me, which had (from what I could tell) changed dramatically, and most likely for the worse, if possible. I had a faint recognition of voices, though the hospital atmosphere was unfamiliar to me. I had not been in one since my day of birth. The tubes hooked to my arms and the machines surrounding me seemed to exist as extensions of my very being, as I had not the energy or the consciousness to process them as anything but sentient creatures.

The pain from the wounds I had suffered deadened over time, and I couldn't have remembered how much. Minutes, hours, days, months. How long had I been fluttering between darkness and light's rejected shadows? I didn't give much regard to the split-seconds I _was_ aware of time's passage – as the memories of my life faded back into place, I found myself wanting to die that much more.

One thing I've learned about dying: it's easier to be alive and want to die, than it is to be dying and want to live.

----

The pain was excruciating.

The statically chill air of the atmosphere enveloping me battered my eyes, the only reason I was aware they were open. Dusk blinded me, a black pitch spread across my vision, my ability to communicate the agony. My spine lurched and cracked like a whip, and I was hunched over. I wasn't strong enough to attempt rejection of the pain, and so I was powerless to act except in realizing I had to endure it, and not knowing why.

My reality seemed to fizzle and dissipate, as, for the first time, I didn't feel connected to anything except the rolling torture, the burning. Oh, the burning. My arms struggled against bonds of plastic and metal and wire, I pulled, and fear swept through me like wildfire blazes on a trail of gasoline, though these emotions were confusing themselves in my head.

I closed my eyes.

My arms, straining against the wires, snapped free like little twigs and buckled around my waist. My teeth clenched together, trapping the screams, as if any release of sound would turn me paroxysmal.

I heard nothing, saw nothing, felt nothing, knew nothing.

Voices, voices streamed into my string of semi-conscious thought, clouded by the blackness and the pain.

My blazing inferno, my hell, was what I deserved. No better, no worse.

My blood boiled, and this sensation brought me back to the alley, to Caine, to the end of a life.

I wanted mine over.

Just not like this.

My entire frame was wracked with this agony, the raging heat that twisted through my bones and wove its way around the sinews of my muscle like poisoned vines leaking a stinging venom that chafed at the flesh and wore me away, increasing the folds of pain with every level of my system it penetrated.

The misery, the misery of looking back on everything I've ever learned about life, and then looking past it, to this, was misery. My connections severed, I surrendered to the pain, and let myself go.

In an instant, the pain exploded to a higher degree, taking the opportunity to freely filter through my body without my psychological or physical restraint of it. I felt like I was drowning, the weight of oceans crushing me, closing me up, swallowing me whole.

Uninhibited, the pain continued to ravage me, taking control.

I became one with it, as they say, as it became more and more a part of me, all that I knew, all that I would remember.

Something clicked, like a gun barrel sliding into place, and as the pain mastered me, I mastered control, and we were synchronous. My veins, wells of blood, became racetracks on which we slid, losing each other in the mayhem. My skin felt charred and scorched, tender, but my insides writhed with pleas for this control, a control that meant I was only aware of this pain, the science of it, predicting its movements, its new kills.

My eyes opened, and this time, I saw this new world. Fear flushed me again.

A voice, again.

"It's okay, Eisley," Carlisle's words echoed in my empty skull.

He was at the foot of the bed, leaning forward, a hand raised, either poised to restrain me or ready to keep me calm. I closed my eyes, saltiness spilling out of the corners, the scream festering in my bowels, in my throat, licking at my lips.

"Eisley." Again.

The place faded, and I shied from the blackness, opening my eyes again.

A surge of powerful emotion ripped up my spine, dividing at my ribs, followed by a sharply searing pain. It felt as though knives were cutting my gutflesh away from my ribcage.

The scream dislodged itself from my throat I erupted in agony, caught in a pit of fire, losing control. The glass windows of the room shattered into millions of glinting shards of crystal, a wave that reverberated back onto me and pushed me away. I shut my mouth against it. My vision clouded.

Carlisle and other dark figures around me reeling with the crash, more coming from somewhere I could not see behind me.

I began to consider that I had already died, and was in some form of Hell.

Abruptly, everything was silent. A saintly quiet. Then everything was clear.

Then everything was gone.


	24. Closed

"What just happened?"

"Did it work?"

"Ouch. Emmett, you're on my leg-"

"Carlisle?"

The fluorescent bulbs above our heads oscillated humbly, buzzing as the house's backup generator pushed electricity through them. The chill night air swept through the room via the gaping holes where our windowed East wall used to be. The shards glistened in the moonlight, throwing ornate rainbow patterns around the shadows of the living room.

Emmett, Rosalie, Jasper, and Bella were pulling themselves together on the other side of the room. They'd descended the stairs nanoseconds before the explosion. Edward helped Alice free herself from the tangle of IV cords that had caught her arm as she crouched to avoid the blow. More than likely she'd seen it coming.

I got to my feet, scraping my hands down the legs of my pants, jarring loose the bits of windowpane lodged in the fabric, cutting my hands. I took a look around. The windows had shattered into the safety-approved million-and-one minute pieces of glass. I paced to the open wall, my Italian leather shoes grinding on the shards.

Explosion?

I pivoted. "Everyone alright?"

"Of course, Carlisle," Emmett grunted as he stood.

Explosion? There was too much glass _in_ the living room, consistent with a blow from the _out_side. If Eisley had somehow caused the explosion, which made no sense at _all... _the window was somehow sucked _inward, _shattering in the process.

I treaded lightly over the mess back toward the hospital bed. Eisley laid still on her side, eyes closed, as if sleeping. I pushed two fingers into the crick of her neck, finding no pulse. The heart monitor's screen had cracked down the center, and it's neon lights flickered against the loss of power.

"Carlisle?" Edward hovered at my side. "Is she-"

"I don't know."

Without warning, Hamlet weaved through us again, hopping up onto the bed and nudging Eisley with his muzzle, sniffing her skin. When his nose made contact, he sneezed and pulled back. I watched him, touched her exposed arm. She felt warm, but not humanly warm – the degree of warm I had achieved here by being a vampire in contact with another vampire.

Or was my perception subjective?

"Edward, touch her here," I gestured. He glanced hesitantly at me, but sighed and did so.

"Warm?"

"Like a true monster," he replied sourly.

I let it drop. If she had survived the procedure, then why was she out cold?

Hamlet nuzzled around some more, inhaling her scent, exhaling short breaths over her face and hair.

"If she's gone, Carlisle, it may just be that her body is cooling down." Esme inputted.

I had no need to breathe, but I let a heavy exhale loose anyway. My chest felt tight.

"One way to be sure," I whispered. The others had all crowded around now. I reached around the dog and gently tugged Eisley to roll her onto her back. Using my thumb, I carefully lifted her left eyelid.

The onyx pupil had dilated hugely. I stretched the skin back more.

Eisley's irises gleamed green in the white lighting, the same, pale jade hue. The color of the buxus-sempervirens shrubs growing in the backyard.

I pulled away, feeling my stomach drop.

_It was too much venom_.

_I lost my control._

"You did what you could, Carlisle," Alice whispered, clearly disconcerted, disconcerted in a way that sounded foreign in comparison to my leaden emotion. The quiet reverence of this statement almost shocked me, but settled for a stop at minor confusion.

Hamlet laid down next to his kid, tucking his head into the crook of her arm.

----

I held off on calling the orphanage.

I didn't relish the idea of being caught in a lie, especially one regarding the death of an orphan, whose life I might have just stayed out of. The story: the injuries sustained were treated, but internal hemorrhaging erupted before we had time to stem the flow of blood. Eisley Martel Monahan would have drowned in her own bodily fluids, a slow and painful death.

We made plans to move the body from Forks back to Chicago. The authorities there would want it, to do whatever with. I didn't know if her parents had a Will drawn up for funeral arrangements and things like that.

I would have to either forge medical documents and other verifiable signatures signing off on the legalities of performing doctoral care in my own home.

There's a lot of paperwork involved in failure.

I couldn't understand _why_ I had such an aversion to dealing with this girl's death.

I was a doctor. Just an emergency room doctor, but a doctor. And a vampire. Just a vegetarian vampire, but a vampire, a vampire with centuries of life and death experiences under his belt. I'd been through so much worse than this before. What was so different this time?

Denial.

It wasn't that I hadn't the coping mechanism to deal with death.

I was that I hadn't ever had to cope with losing someone I had tried to Turn.

Edward, Esme, and Emmett had all become vampires by me, with no complications outside of the pain.

I had never lost one.

I had never counted on losing one.

So I didn't call the orphanage.

I packed a few things in a duffel, and booked tickets for the next day's first flight to Chicago.

Hamlet never left her side.

If he were paying attention to anything else, he might have noticed my lugubriousness, and accepted Eisley for what she was; dead, and long, long gone.

I was getting ahead of myself.

-----

That evening, my family and I decided to take an express hunting trip. In trying to view the whole ordeal objectively, I'd tipped off some of the wiser, more attune of them (Jasper, Esme, Alice) that I wasn't doing a very good job.

Last out of the door, I shot a tentative whistle in Hamlet's direction. He sat up, ears perked.

"Hungry?" I asked, and then felt stupid for doing so.

He yipped, but didn't move, keeping his paws planted on Eisley's unmoving chest.

"Suit yourself," I replied, and turned to leave. He was at my side in an instant, jumping down from the weathered hospital bed with a final, hefty nudge in Eisley's ear.

I looked around the dark living room, and the small, silhouetted figure lying still in the center.

"Sorry, Eisley."

I shut the door.


	25. Escape

_**Eisley POV**_

****No pun intended, but I was officially getting sick and tired of the whole conscious/unconscious thing.

****My head throbbed painfully as I righted myself into a seated position, forcing a groan out of my raw throat.

The rumble dragged its way over the coils of my esophagus as easily as a fish through water.

Dazed, I inhaled, and gagged as a thousand tastes assaulted my tongue, the roof of my mouth. The air seemed to hitch in my lungs for the shortest of moments before dissipating automatically. I had no desire to do that again, and my inhalations ceased.

I did not experience the loss of oxygen as I thought I would after a few seconds of holding my breath.

I opened my eyes.

And shut them quickly, startled into a reverie.

I hadn't expected that.

My hand groped for something familiar.

My nostrils prickled with Hamlet's scent, but somehow I concluded he wasn't near.

_What the hell is going on_?

My degree of awareness had escalated beyond measure. I opened my eyes again, glancing around the room.

Everything was so clear. Each object in the room seemed distinctly defined against all the others, all at once bringing everything into focus, and I could see _everything. _

The sheets of the bed tangled in my legs and suddenly seemed heavy, unnecessary.

Had I not been so enchanted with the world at that moment, my fear of it would have consumed me.

The floor beneath my feet glistened with white fluorescent light, little pinpricks of color bounced between the glass, shattered in a pattern that led straight back to the bed. Every inch of these rainbows was caught in my eyes, held captive by my gaze. The moon outside streamed its beams through the cool room.

I noticed stairs in the corner. No, understatement. On these tiled stairs I individualized every grain of cement encrusting their divides, and every foreign speck of dust lading them. On the carpeted floor of this living room, my eyes separated every strand of synthetic fiber.

Other sounds, other reverberations echoed in my mind, which seemed cavernous now. I might have sworn I heard the Earth spinning on its axis, and the sound of water dripping in some basement far away. Somewhere, car horns and the rush of tires against smooth blacktop passed through my ear canals: these sounds were familiar, sounds I could have identified with. Rooted to the spot, I stood adjacent to the windowless wall, the origin of the glass, expecting to see a road winding below, beautiful headlights hovering down parallel to each other, but nothing met my stares except thousands and thousands of leaves, painted various shades of gray and black, dark in the night.

_Where's the vat of toxic waste,_ I wondered, wracking my head for an explanation for all this.

I realized my fear of the unknown wasn't being _suppressed_ by my fascination. It was being confused with it, but instead of a surge of adrenaline, my brain tingled in anticipation, unexpectedly striking me with wonder of the quantitative sort: I felt as though the ability to _know_ things, understand things, was setting my neurons on fire. I had never before processed so many ideas, emotions, or questions at once. As Shakespeare had once characterized Hamlet's mind as a table, on which _one_ dangerous notion was being overshadowed by entire books of unnecessary thoughts, I saw everything laid out before me, and so many of my pre-unconscious memories seemed ir_relevant. _

_If I am dead, is this Heaven?_

No, not irrelevant. Incomplete.

Completely incomplete. Some awkward lurch in my gut took me aback, and my first reaction was to buckle over and prepare for the vomit, but this spreading throb seemed to be that which wanted to complete my incomplete thoughts.

They keelhauled back from beneath my shaky ship.

The numbness began to fade. My skin prickled, and I shot unsteady eyes toward the hospital bed, weighed down by miles of clear plastic tubing and colored wires. The panic crashed against my fear, battering my excitement to a pulp and blinding me. Had I been drugged?

I crouched to my hands and knees, and then wondered why that action seemed so instinctive.

I had to get out of here.

Outside, suddenly, a dog howled, and I inhaled in shock, stumbling back.

A fire ignited in my throat, which fought against the scorching parch there. How could I have not noticed the thirst? It was unbearable. My mouth salivated wildly, but this liquid did nothing to soothe the burn. Every new sensation I experienced took me by invisible reins, yanking my attention into a single plane of focus. The dog howled and barked again, somewhere, miles away in the darkened trees.

I became aware of the change of light as my eyes dilated, brightening the atmosphere.

Before I could reel back, push away from the insanity of the situation, wondering why I was acting like a schizophrenic wackjob, a low shudder pealed through my body, traveling from the ends of every vein and artery into my core. A primal snarl ripped from my teeth, and I was out the window in a flash, cascading through the thin, mountain air toward a rolling pitch of trees.

-----

_**Carlisle POV**_

_Vampires are gluttons for the hunt. Some of them, like the Volturi, take minimal pleasure in it, refusing even to leave Volterra to feed. They set the unorthodox standard in that regard: in a way, they're like the white-collar vampires, those richer, lazier folk that capitalize on the sacrifices of others...lives.) Some, like James and Victoria, hunt far beyond the degree of thirst they experience, pushing into places of indescribable satisfaction; a thrill is gained. Newborns are much this way as well, though it can hardly be noted against them. _

_At the opposite end of the spectrum, there's vampires like the Denalis, and us. We find our trips to the forests the same way humans find theirs to the grocery stores: tedious, but necessary. The younger ones, especially Emmett and Edward (always competing, those two) catch some kick in the hunt, but they don't make it a pastime. _

_Not that there aren't plenty of deer on the planet or even grizzly bears in the woods around Washington.– we've simply realized that they wouldn't fully satisfy. In any amount. _

_So, unlike the Volturi, we capitalize on our _own_ sacrifices. _

---

Hamlet was the first in the door, sliding through the jam the moment it opened wide enough to accommodate.

The teenagers entered the house through their respective windows (luckily still intact). Upstairs, Bella and Edward laid down on his Barcelona sofa together, eliciting soft scrunches from the leather. Emmett's video game controller beat against his hands in steady rhythm (Rosalie admonished him), and Alice and Jasper prepared for a meditative session. The bathroom sink water flowed from the tap in light streams.

Esme and I trailed along, arms interlocked. She whispered sweet nothings into my ears and I grinned: perfectly casual conversation.

I'd been so un-used to having an animal in the _house_ (speaking of, he was nearly mauled to death and eaten by Jasper during the hunt, an accident) that Hamlet's uncharacteristically frantic barking made me jump in surprise.

"Eisley," I whispered, glancing alarmingly at Esme.

We rushed into the foyer, just as Alice came barreling down the stairs, Jasper close behind, and whipped a dainty hand in my direction, ivory fingers curling around my arm.

"Carlisle, Volturi," she warned. "They're on their way."

My eyes found the bed across the room. It laid empty.

Jasper sniffed the air uncomfortably, catching the scent.

"Stay upstairs," I ordered, watching them withdraw aversely before I passed into the living room with Esme.

Hamlet twittered anxiously by the shattered windowpane, howling in short bursts.

A path of glass pieces near the edge of the bed had been disturbed, and trailed to a halt at the dog's feet. He spun in circles, inhaling profusely, excited about whatever scent he was catching. Before I could pinpoint the same, he yipped quietly, seriously, whipping his head back toward the open forest scene below.

Esme and I glanced steadily at each other, and approached, peering over the edge with minor hesitation.

The midnight breeze was swept back into our faces as Jane and Demetri ascended the outside wall and bounded into the room with unpleasant crunches of shoes on the fragmented glass shards.

"Carlisle," she greeted icily.

"Jane." _We meet again. Sigh._

"Demetri," Esme greeted, not impolitely. He grunted in response.

"Can I safely assume you've been monitoring the girl's recovery?" I stepped forward.

"Seems nothing is safe around _you_, Carlisle," she returned.

"Where is she?"

"She awoke a few hours ago and escaped through this window. Lovely what you've done with it," she turned away to gaze at the gaping void in the glass, a sneer curling her lips. "Newborns are _so_ unstable."

"I had no choice," I defended.

"Oh, I believe you. We have not harmed her."

"Then why are you here?" I advanced.

"To inform you that if she is not back here within 24 hours, we _will _harm her, and it will not be in a way the good doctor can fix. Young vampires are entirely too invasive, and you live only miles from the nearest town. If she reaches it before you reach her, we will take her down."

"Understood," I replied, polite as ever. "Thank you."

"One more thing, Carlisle," Jane paused, "if you're thinking of expanding your coven, in the future, some forewarning would be just great."

I was glad neither Jane nor Demetri were mind-readers (though I was sure Edward was listening) and couldn't hear me tripping and falling over that cliff in my head, or the unpleasant things I thought along with the whole concept 'expanding my coven' – hell, what _had_ I planned to do with Eisley? Not much. I certainly hadn't planned to transform her, and since her evidently false death, I hadn't planned on it anymore after that.

_Maybe we can set her straight and release her into the Alaskan wild to be as ravenous as she wants to be. _

Shoot, Edward would have heard that.

_Scratched_. _I don't have time for this._

"We'll be waiting in the wings, Carlisle, Esme," Jane nodded to each of us and then to Demetri, who uncrossed his arms and followed her as she leapt out the window.

"Can you find her?"

"I'm not much of a tracker," I sighed, "but I'll have the dog, so..." I smiled faintly, and kissed my wife on the cheek.

"I'll hold down the fort. Don't be gone too long."

"Less than 24 hours, my love," I whispered, already detaching myself from her embrace.

I whistled to Hamlet, who sprang to his feet, tucked him squirming under one arm, and jumped from the ledge.


	26. Thirst

_As a human, I was never the bravest, smartest, or most athletic of my peers. I had been spared the shame of attending public school and having to cope with my disabilities (the orphanage in Chicago provided some crappy, mainstream teachings, but in the dim light of their spare, empty storage room, there was little incentive to indulge), at least to a point. Caine had been in plenty of street fights and come out the victor, possessing a degree of brawn that I never would have dreamed of achieving. He was active in recreational sports played by inter-city kids, like handball and parkour (even went through a few rounds of hiphop dance-mania with some northside black boys: he brought his slick moves back to the alleyway and tried to get me involved with something other than my silly tape recordings and feeding scraggly cats. I learned a few things and, in the absence of endurance, soon forgot them.)_

_Still, my time as a homeless orphan didn't harden me the way it did him. _

_My mental savvy grew out of proportion to my physical strength, which didn't advance by any measurable amount between turning nine and turning thirteen. I remained small, skinny, and thoroughly unimpressive. My regular check-up doctor's appointments entailed a trip to the library to scan through the medical dictionary, checking to see if I had any symptoms of any common colds or flus or bacterial infections. What I didn't know, I didn't know. _

_I _did_ learn pretty quick that, through I wasn't _starving_, I wasn't 'meeting my nutritional needs' (says surgical encyclopedia) and thus, my growing up (in the womanly sense) was being stunted. Where most girls hit puberty at eleven or twelve, or even nine or ten, I hadn't yet. I had no curves, and my chest was flat as my brother's, no underarm hair (he _named_ his first one, I gagged) and thanks-be-to-God I hadn't gotten any 'cycle,' or whatever. I'd bet that's _hell_ for homeless people. _

_I knew more about myself than anyone else. I'd had the time to think my life through - living on the street for a few years does wonders for clearing your schedule (not like I would really _know_, never having had a _full_ agenda...)_

_But I wasn't _on_ the street anymore. I was a will-o-wisp of burning ember, billowing through a haunted forest, and among the thousand things I was presently pondering, there was only one I was sure of: I wasn't that girl anymore. _

_That being the single certainly I withheld, I couldn't have imagined what kind of girl I was_now_. _

----

The thirst persisted, chafing at the burning layers of my throat, the flames licking at the roof and sides of my mouth, begging to be quenched, clouding my ability to form simple, coherent thoughts. I became aware that I was running, and the trees whipped by me like a green screen reel, branches snapping at my face, though I felt nothing but light taps on my cheeks. The sound of wind and cars dragged along behind me, failing to keep up with my staggering speeds.

I was _fast. _

I didn't care what freak accident the Earth had thrust upon me. I didn't care. I was _fast. _I was running and nobody could catch me.

My throat protested again, making me ravenous.

My heels dug into soft ground suddenly, and the force of abrupt deceleration threw me off my feet, tossing me a few feet into the dark air into a section of ground hardened with many layers of clay and uninviting dirt. Amazingly shock-absorbent dirt. The collision had little to no painful impact, and I was on my hands and knees in a crouch that same second.

There was no way to get used to the sensation I was experiencing. My body seemed to react more immediately, even _before-thinking_, to my emotions, my needs, my desires. I felt none of the usual tingling in my pathetic muscles, signaling they had been through enough workout for one day and needed a rest.

Instead, they flexed with the challenge, thrilled, free. My head whipped around to each arm, my eyes taking in the development of strength in the visible form. My previously weak, sinewy muscles had stretched, tightened, expanded around my once-fragile bones, pumping me up.

I was still skinny, but I was lithe. I was fit, I was_ strong_.

I felt strong.

But too tentative to be happy about it. Not just yet.

I ran a dry tongue over my teeth and lips, licking dried blood.

The metallic taste of the iron in the fluid throbbed in my mouth, more concentrated, more intense than any other instance I'd tasted my own blood. My throat exploded in excited burning sensations, reacting to the treat.

The _treat?_

_Why did I call it that?_

At this point, of course, I'm beginning to theorize what has become of my former self, and it doesn't take me long to reach that tentative conclusion I'm sure _you're _sure I've come to.

Everything about the present situation invites me in: the power, the abilities, the freedom, but everything besides that was flashing me big, red warning signs. I should have turn and run until my legs gave out and I fell over the edge of the planet, but as I said, I was never the smartest of folk. Or was my intelligence simply enjoying it, too?

But I couldn't be a vampire. Or superwoman, or anything weird like that. Superwoman was more honorably favorable, but I could only think of one super-powered entity that also had an irrevocable thirst for human blood, and I not only could _not _BE a vampire, it wasn't possible.

This isn't stupid, Saturday morning cartoons, or a bad episode of Count Dracula. I don't live in lalafantasyland, and for the first time in my life, I didn't want to.

But neither could I ignore this _thirst_.

It wasn't just my stomach that felt the parch: my entire body reacted to the lack of nutrition, pulsating with an emptiness I have never felt before. I _needed _blood, and I needed it _right_ _now_. Before I could pull away from my primal notions, a snarl ripped from my mouth and something monstrously instinctive in feel took me for a ride through the woods in search of something to eat.

_**Cullen's POV**_

__Carlisle searched the woods for hours trying to pinpoint Eisley's scent.

He'd memorized her human smell, but hadn't had a chance to make the same olfactory impression with her vampire smell. They collided like opposite-facing trains on a single track, bouncing against each other again and again as they reeled back with the collective impact. Eventually, though, the stronger of the two smells pushed the other off the monorail, and Carlisle began to focus, leading Hamlet to a flat bed of dirt which emanated the scent, allowing him to catch whiffs as well.

The sun began it's earthly ascent at the usual hour, casting pale rays of blue light into the trees, giving the forest an ephemeral glow, accented by the chilly mist. As gray silhouettes, vampire and dog darted through the brush, chasing the scent. In the soft pallor of the fog, they seemed to float along, feet padding the ground ever-so-gently.

As the sun rose, the light became less filtered, and more tinged with hues of yellow.

Beautiful, especially in Carlisle's eyes, which made clear every diamond drop of dew on every translucent green leaf and blade of grass, bristling pleasantly in the vivacity of a new morning, enjoying the rays while they lasted, for, by early afternoon, the clouds were sure to re-take the skies.

Hamlet's speed neatly matched Carlisle's. A mud-colored torpedo, he navigated the soft underbrush and knotted trees' roots with ease, his splotchy brown coat mingling with the dirt as the sun gave it color, dark blue eyes reflecting the wheaty gold the way an ebbing river reflects its city lights.

The twenty-fours had mostly expired before they discovered her again, perched on a rock overlooking the bouldered valleys below, the mossy streams and rivers, and the mountains in the distant horizon, glowing in the peaceful light of the Sun like a ghost, a magnificent ghost.


	27. Bear

_**Eisley POV**_

__I had collapsed beneath the first familiar thing I found.

This tree, a large oak, heavily rooted to the ground, threw remarkable flashes of memory my way, memories of my brother and a park we used to visit when we lived alone on the streets. I had since forgotten or couldn't recall the name of that quiet forest, though I remembered the fear it instilled in me my first night lost within it.

Next to everything that had happened since, I would have welcomed that fear times thousands of degrees: it was so tame.

I practically threw myself into the tangle of roots beneath this tree, as if I could bury the monster within me that begged for more of what I couldn't bear to give it. My body shook with the magnitude of the thirst, the burning throat. As I laid there, convulsing quietly, I had time to process a few things weighing me down, making me heavy.

Though I had never condoned Caine's rampant slaughter of more than twenty innocent men, women, and children, I found that I had never condemned him for it, either. Now that he was gone, I didn't think he needed (or ever needed) my forgiveness, just my understanding, which he must have known he couldn't have.

I understood now, and the notions made me sick with self-loathing. I retched violently.

One by one, half-stories and the answers to questions left unexplained by him began to click into place next to each other, egged on by the part of me that wanted only for the mystery to be solved, for something outlandish to be _true_, if only to end the pain. The other part seemed to wither and die in the shadow of my understanding, overwhelmed by the agonizing realization that I couldn't have my brother back, even in the face of truth.

For the first time since I killed my brother, I accepted Caine was dead, and I was not.

But judging by the horrid way I felt, and the craving for blood, I wasn't alive, either.

And neither had he been.

---

I hadn't the mental capacity to simply sit back and _allow_ my insatiable appetite for bodily fluids to take control of me and everything I believed in. I didn't want to be overwhelmed, and certainly not by something so primal. I couldn't bring myself to call it disgusting, because, in the current light, it stimulated my senses rather pleasantly, but the humane aspect of me wasn't throwing in the towel just yet.

In my frantic escape from temptation, I'd discovered my nose to be a trap for all scents animal and human, a hurricane of aromas sweetly satisfying on every rung of the ladder, from the less-lovely deer and reeking raccoon, to something that smacked of _human_s.

In the short amount of time I'd been exposed to this strange, new world, I was already developing a _preference _to various types of blood, and it disgusted me.

_No_.

I wouldn't do it. I would rather die, and not be a monster, than give myself over to the thirst.

My throat and mouth burned angrily.

I felt myself dragged out from beneath the knotted roots of the oak tree, against my free will and better judgment, the power to feel something other than the aching sensation quickly leaving me.

It wasn't long before I caught a new scent, this one more concentrated, more potent, more staggering than the others. I did not need the air to sustain my lungs and give me life, but I couldn't help inflating my chest with inhalations, allowing the bittersweet scent to fill me up. My bones tingled in excited anticipation, and I bounded off into the trees to find my bloody oasis.

My run took me over the river (a jump I cleared easily), through another thick mess of tall pines, to a sudden stop at the edge of a steep hill, embellished with boulders that had tumbled down from the higher altitude at which I stood.

The scent of iron took me by force, right then, right there. I pivoted, facing the trees again. My eyes whipped around, spotting the target, a sizable grizzly bear, struggling to free a back foot from a rusted, metal spring trap.

I exhaled ferally, palpitating with anxiety. Ducking into the tangle of low-growing trees and brush, I skittered along toward the moaning animal, my nostrils throbbing with the smell of blood, so sweet and powerful.

It wasn't until I was a few feet behind the grizzly that human logic began to scream at me (or I began to listen), begging to know how in the hell I would floor such a massively strong creature. I swallowed, throat aching with desire. My mouth hung open on my desperate face, tongue lapping up the rancid air.

The bear noticed me before I could hide myself again, roaring frantically.

Startled, I stumbled back, losing my balance, and falling to the ground. My arm lashed out away from my chest, but instead of hitting solid dirt, it brushed against a second spring trap, which jolted with the impact and closed its piercing jaws. I yanked my appendage out of the way just in time to save it from getting eaten, but the teeth of the trap still caught my flesh on the ascent, ripping several deep gashes into my thinly muscular arm.

They did not bleed, but they stung like the dickens. I bit my lip to cut off the scream, and tried to stand, to push away before the predator became the prey.

The bear reacted to my agony, ceasing to howl fussily in my direction, instead fixing me with a guilty, sorrowful look, almost as if it were miserably wishing it could have warned me about the second trap. I swallowed, my breath choking in my raspy throat. The grizzly shifted, pulling against it's trap, trying to get closer to me.

My ears caught a rustling in the bushes. In the dusty light of the sun, I focused on two miniature grizzly silhouettes, and two bear cubs emerged from the trees, eyes round and shaky. They huddled beneath the swaying body of their mother, and I closed my eyes, groaning in pain and rejection, again refusing to be a monster.

Not that I was in any state to overpower them.

I got to my feet shakily, backing away toward the treeline.

My gut churned, and I cursed my conscience.

I groaned and turned back, reappearing in the clearing just as the bear was licking the head of the smaller cub. I shut my mouth tight and held my breath as if life depended on it, cautiously approaching her rear leg, where the brown, shaggy fur was wet with rainwater, and the flesh sagged, dripping with blood both dried and running. The metal pincers of the trap ground against her bone, ripping new strands of muscle loose with every painful squirm she gave.

The cubs yipped softly, afraid of my advance. I shuffled around slowly, the bear's eyes boring into my skull. She could not reach her head back this far, I was certain, so I ducked down into a squat, and flexed my fingers, reaching one hand beneath the spring and sliding the safety catch loose.

The trap snapped back, eliciting a roar of relief from the bear, who quickly limped away, her cubs in tow.

I allowed myself to lean back and hit the ground, a bed of soft grass and tufts of clover. I licked at the smooth, crimson layer of blood on my fingers, allowing the warmth of stale blood to wash over my raw throat, though it satisfied only just enough to relax me partly.

I was perfectly content with just lying there, waiting to die of starvation, though, somehow, I only figured the lack of nutrition would make me more ravenous. Still, I kept my eyes on the leaves of the trees hundreds of feet above me. Blackbirds swooped through the branches, chattering carelessly amongst their little groups. The pale golden light of the sun was beginning to overtake the blue pallor of the early morning.

Suddenly, a massive shadow entered my field of vision, eclipsing the light above.

I scrambled to my hands and knees, ducking as the bear sniffed at my back, then my wounded arm.

She extended a long, pink tongue, and gently licked at it.

I cringed at the odd sensation, but, having expected a bite or another murderous roar, didn't flinch.

My thirst wanted to capitalize on her compassion, to have me pounce for the neck and deliver a crushing, fatal rip to the jugular. I fought the urge, but the temptation of fresh, streaming blood was too much, and I found myself crawling to her injured leg. Her head followed me, watching.

I gave a cautiously, apologetically fearful glance at her and her cubs. _I don't need very much, just a little. Just a little drink of it. That's all._

I doubt I'll ever be certain if I was trying to reassure the big, scary bear, or myself.

Either way, my mouth found the wound as if magnetized, and I began to suck away what blood there was already leaving her veins, drinking away the infected fluids, and as I did this, she attended to my own wounds, as if she owed me a mutual favor.

Thus, I succumbed.


	28. Starting Over

___The twenty-fours had mostly expired before they discovered her again, perched on a rock overlooking the bouldered valleys below, the mossy streams and rivers, and the mountains in the distant horizon, glowing in the peaceful light of the Sun like a ghost, a magnificent ghost. _

Eisley sat alone, very still, on the edge of a cold, onyx boulder, weathered smooth with time and waterfall erosion. Pine green moss encompassed the wreckage of rocks tumbled below, and the edges of the stream that trickled between them. The treeline hovered above, dappled with sunlight which blazed pale yellow over the ridges of the purple mountain peaks in the distance.

She shifted slightly as the wind ruffled her soft brown locks, reacting to a change in the pleasant woody scents, catching two new sensations of smell: one clean, sterile, and unmoving, the other animalistically bitter, but both familiar. Her eyes did not leave the magnificent scene before her, and she felt no impulse to run. Her strength ran parallel to her desire for closure.

Carlisle and Hamlet hovered by the treeline for a moment, before the dog contented himself with pursuing a plump, gray mouse into the hollow space beneath a tree. Carlisle watched him go, suspecting Eisley had already caught both of their scents. He was prepared to defend himself, as always, but didn't expect he'd need to; he was only gauging her newborn instability.

Nothing threw up any red flags, except the amount of _control _the child was exercising. In this aspect, her transformation was nearly unique, rivaling only one other Carlisle had witnessed, and that was Bella's. Of course, Bella's self-awareness then was lightyears beyond anything expected. To be accurate, he'd have to further assess the situation with Eisley.

And even then, she was still only a child, an orphan child, truly alone in the world.

Carlisle's stomach churned, and he tugged anxiously on the strap of the leather bag slung across his shoulder. He swept away a few stray twigs from his white linen shirt and black, pinstriped vest before tucking his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans and stepping into the sun.

His skin immediately reacted to the change in light, glittering with the intensity of diamonds.

He held back for a few seconds, breathing in the fresh mountain air.

Eisley's face challenged those carved into alabaster marble, perfectly expressionless, contemplating. Her ears caught Carlisle's footfall two or three yards away, and she felt his ripple of hesitation. This was a man she knew little to nothing about, and yet, was irrevocably connected to.

The first time she'd felt connected to _anything_.

With that in mind, Eisley kept her focus.

Carlisle closed the distance foot by foot, so casually he appeared on a simple, carefree stroll along a typically beautiful hiking trail in the mountains. He stepped lightly along the natural stairs created by the slope of rocks, over the stream, and slid sideways onto the boulder next to Eisley, with some inches of space between them.

He mimicked her positioning, letting his legs dangle in front of him, hands entwined in his lap.

He scanned her inconspicuously, a doctor's check. Her right sleeve was ripped in six places, revealing jagged cuts beneath the fabric of her gray thermal. Otherwise, outside of a few lasting scrapes and bruises, she seemed well enough. Her hands lay still in her lap, drenched in drying blood. It didn't smell human, but he couldn't help but wonder.

Eisley's mind drifted in sync with his. It wasn't difficult for her to imagine he wasn't looking her up and down to make sure she was okay. Her fingers flexed subconsciously.

Carlisle figured she'd not be so calm if she hadn't at least _begun _to understand her situation. Based on recent experiences with the Volturi, and judging by Edward's reaction after reading her, he'd also figured she knew nothing of vampires prior to becoming one.

So he posed the question, and by her answer, would know for sure how she was coping.

She looked up at him, eyes glossy, hovering between that peculiar trademark green and a pale, liquid topaz.

"Did you eat?" he inquired gently, gaze fixed upon the horizon.

"Not enough," she replied somberly, puzzling Carlisle. It was characteristic of newborns to pillage food sources far beyond their proper fills of blood, and here Eisley had obviously eaten _something_, but not _enough_?

"What was it?"

"Grizzly bear." Her eyes turned away from him again.

"My son, Emmett, is fond of those," he mused, keeping things light.

"She was caught in a trap a few miles back," she continued quietly.

Carlisle caught the undertones of guilty sorrow in her voice and sighed. "At least she's out of her misery."

Suddenly, Eisley's head whipped around, her eyes glinting harshly. "I didn't kill her." She would _not_ be responsible for the death of a mother and her children, even if they were only three of hundreds of wild grizzly bears in the wild.

Carlisle didn't flinch. Eisley seemed to deflate, and turned away again. He leaned down, resting his elbows on his thighs. "Do you have any theories about what's happened to you?" He needed to know.

She contemplated his question for the slightest of moments, swallowing a wad of saliva.

Nearby, Hamlet dashed through the trees, happily occupied.

Finally, she spoke, but gave neither of the answers Carlisle was expecting.

"When we were kids, my brother and I were always together," she began, coughing into a balled fist.

"Caine Andrew?" Carlisle questioned mildly.

"The same." She didn't miss a beat. "I wasn't ever strong enough to be without him, not nearly as self-sufficient as he was. I was too little to really remember my parents loving me. I'm sure they did. But not as much as Caine."

"They were gone a lot, on business trips, and we didn't spend much time at the house when they were away. I remember it: big, white, clean. Lots of money went into it, that's what Dad used to say, that we should be proud to be what we were. And we were, and I liked living there," she paused, smiling faintly. "In the summer, Mom stopped working and picked lemons from the tree in the backyard for sweet tea and this cake she used to make. It was delicious."

She paused, licking her lips and swallowing again.

"Caine always made sure I got the biggest cut, that I was never left out of anything he said I deserved to have. I never understood what he meant, but I took from him everything he offered me. His time, his wisdom, and his protection, when our parents were busy, or didn't want to be around him. He was happy for a long time that way, just keeping me close. We spent lots of time outside in the city or at least pretending we were somewhere else. We used to build secret forts around Chicago: in parks, in old buildings, in our bedrooms, anywhere. I mostly watched. They were his private worlds."

"And one he just...stopped. Stopped building them, for months. He wouldn't talk anymore. It was like he quit existing. We never drifted apart, but we didn't become closer. He only said he'd keep me safe, but with himself he didn't have the same aversion to danger. He went looking for it, went places by himself."

"When I asked him about it, he only said he was making one more fort, and that, when I was old enough, he'd lead me to it. Said it was too dangerous as long as I was so little and uncoordinated."

Eisley contemplated for a moment, flexing her shoulders against the chilly breeze that caught on her flannel shirt.

"A few weeks later, we had the fire."

She paused again, perfectly still. Carlisle watched as she rubbed her injured arm, topaz eyes glassy.

"Our bedrooms were on the third floor, and the fire had already taken the first two. Caine pulled me out of bed and toward the windows, just as the wood beneath our feet caved. The smoke rose through the room, choking me, and the flames roared with an intensity that only happened in movies, made me wonder if I was still asleep, and dreaming. I remember the sound. Fire's not as quiet as people think it is."

She shut her eyes, inhaled, deeply engulfed in her recollections. She'd had years to learn to speak eloquently about the traumatic event, and part of her was ready to let that go.

"It's not just the smooth ripple of your toys melting as they're eaten up by it, or the lapping of flames against wallpaper and furniture. For years I've been trying to answer the stupid questions hospital therapists and orphanage social workers ask about the fire. I was three, illiterate, sheltered, and they were smothering me more than the smoke had, but I've had so much time to think, and it's the _sound_ of it that I remember."

She opened her eyes. "The crackle, the way it barked at us, threw my brother and I into opposite corners, the sea of heat between us, amplified in the sun of the window. The way it licks at the walls and leaves those black stains, snaps and pops as the flames divide. Caine had gotten around it, got back to me, opened the window. I heard the sirens of fire engines blare up at us, men in yellow suits pounding their boots against the asphalt, shouting for us to 'jump, jump.'"

"He held me. I remember his heart beating against my ear. Then we jumped."

She stopped for a few minutes, withdrawing slightly from the storytelling in weak attempts to collect herself.

"'I've been sitting on this rock for three _hours_," she laughed uncomfortably, "trying to accurately describe the fire, in a way that would encompass every sight, sound, and feeling of it," she arced a hand through the air for emphasis, "because I knew someone would come for me and I'd have to tell them again why I'm here."

She swallowed, becoming stone-faced again. "I wonder what it feels like to burn to death," she whispered. "The fire took everything from me."

Carlisle began to consider that Eisley was no longer referring to the fire that killed her parents.

"Caine," she mumbled, "he used to tell me I was a bomb waiting to go off, always tripping over myself, breaking things. That I was set to self-destruct from the beginning. That we needed each other. He should have stayed away from me."

Eisley ducked her head, pushing a shirtsleeve against her nose, cursing the onslaught of grief threatening her stability. A few quietly tense moments passed before she regained her calmer composure, and turned her eyes away from her glittering hands, back toward the majestic, sun-bathed mountains.

"I should have made him tell me what he was."

Carlisle suddenly understood.

"I killed him," she whimpered. "I killed him."

It only took the pain those three little words to become unbearable. Eisley slumped forward, sobbing quietly. She would never truly cry again, and to be without such able tears made the agony of sorrow that much harder to expel, the hurt that much more potent.

The death of a brother that much more earth-shattering.


	29. Friend

**Author's Note: Sorry it took me so long to add this chapter. Writing it took a lot out of my muse: there were so many things Carlisle and Eisley needed to discuss, other factors to consider, and I didn't want to make it too lengthy or boring. It _did_ end up being a little long – but hey, it's the last chapter of the first story in the Eisley Series. So, if nothing else, please enjoy, and review.**

Following the exposure of her highlighted life story, Eisley continued to speak about her years in Seattle, particularly the ones she spent alone, answering the questions Carlisle put forth with quiet dignity and resignation. He kept the mood invariably lighter than it had been during the painful recollection of past trauma, and Eisley almost found his fascination with her tales amusing in its own right.

Her ability to communicate such stories amazed the intellect and struck Carlisle's heart in its very core, braising it with the old, but not unfamiliar, sense of rhythm and beat. Before the worst had happened, Eisley's short life as a human had been fraught with adventures of all degrees. She seemed to enjoy her memories more and more as they flooded back, the last remnants of venom taking their place in her system, clearing her head. She related stories both vital to her being and completely insignificant in every way imaginable: from how meeting Hamlet, the overly friendly dog, had given her something to survive for, to how she used to annoy a particularly snooty librarian by using the printer far beyond the capacity of the ink cartridges, and then paying her back for spent five-cent-each papers in large bills, demanding change in coins, please.

The pallid cloud of anguish hanging over her head was immovable, but (as Carlisle noticed) not un_shak_able.

He'd choose to believe she'd be alright, no matter what happened.

As far as her brother went, there was nothing he could've said or done to soothe the burns inflicted upon her by the fire. They would take time, years and years of time, to heal, and even then, scars were inevitable. Telling her that the flames had killed Caine, rather than the knife to the heart, would only seem unnecessarily patronizing.

When Eisley finally ceased her doleful storytelling, she inhaled deeply, looking up at Carlisle with soft golden eyes.

He returned the favor, noticing the change in color, finding it puzzling.

"So, in answer to your first question," she began somberly, "yes, I know what happened to me."

Carlisle swallowed easily, remained silent, waited.

She seemed about to speak again, but closed her mouth, looking rather nonplussed. For a few long seconds she pondered something or other, making her audience wish he were gifted telepathically.

"Is it stupid to wonder if I'm dreaming?" she muttered.

"Only if you're sure you're not," he replied, his soft, euphonious voice ringing absolutely.

"Nightmares don't usually look this good." Her eyes fell toward the beautiful landscape.

Carlisle slumped forward, entwining his pale hands and resting his elbows on his thighs, analyzing her expression. She turned her head, returned his neutrally honest stare. "But then, without being awkward saying it, vampires don't, either."

He smiled, ducking his chin into his chest and laughing under his breath. "You were expecting Count Dracula?"

She didn't smile. Not yet. She swallowed hesitantly, licking her lips. "Are all of you..." she gestured weakly with a bloody hand.

"Yes," he replied, very seriously.

She turned away suddenly, her shoulders tightening as if she fought the urge to run, her breath calm, but heavy. Carlisle pictured her connecting the mental dots. If she had any recollection of her stint in the Cullen Home Hospital (which was likely the most vivid of her memories at the moment), it was safe to assume she understood the obvious.

"And Caine?" Though posed as a question, Eisley's flat, accepting tone made the phrase more of a statement.

"Yes," he returned, with measurable hesitation.

Eisley appeared nearly indifferent to his earth-shattering response. Her spine curled ever-so-slightly, her posture sinking a bit, but otherwise, surprisingly, no major emotional trigger was activated. _Perhaps_, Carlisle imagined, _I do not understand something_. Not that he could be any judge of her emotional character: he hadn't been around her long enough. But newborn vampires were volatile, panicky things. It didn't take much to set them off.

"Makes sense," she spoke, as casually as a calculus student might respond to Einstein's theory of relativity. Carlisle's train of thought came to a screeching halt, his brow furrowed. Eisley noticed his discomfort.

"It explains everything," she elaborated somberly. "What attacked him, why everyone thought he was dead, why he didn't come back. Why he killed all those people."

Carlisle nodded, looking away.

Hamlet trotted into the picture, looking smug with the limp carcass of a gray mouse between his jaws. He hopped up on a second boulder and laid down, pawing the pitiful thing. Eisley watched him curiously.

"Can animals-" she began gingerly, nudging a thumb weakly in the dog's direction.

"No," Carlisle replied wisely, straightening his back and rolling his shoulders. "Well, as far as any research shows, animals, any kind of animals, anything _inhuman, _cannot be a vampire, by definition."

"Definition?" she entreated cautiously, her voice low.

Carlisle shifted, pulling his left leg up beneath his right. "There are certain things about us that come with the territory. Like...default settings, traits we all have."

Eisley continued to stare cautiously, but Carlisle caught her adam's apple sink when she swallowed.

He eyed her for a moment, watching as she struggled to comprehend, no doubt, the idea of him and his troupe being cold-blooded murderers of innocent humans. If he didn't want her spooked, it was time to try another tactic.

"Typically, Eisley-" he started, gazing at his hands in thought. Eisley's attention piqued at the use of her name. "young vampires, like yourself, are very..._angry_, easily excited. Volatile."

"I'm thirteen," she began, trying to comprehend.

"No, it has nothing to do with your _human_ age," he dismissed, waving a hand weakly in supportive gesture, "once you are infected with the venom, you cease to grow, your body ceases to change the way it would if you were still a-" he cut himself off, feeling the landmines beneath the shaky ground he was treading.

Eisley eyed him narrowly. "Alive," she concluded, withdrawing again. "So this is Hell."

"You are _not_ dead, Eisley," Carlisle assured her.

"No, just not living," she retorted subliminally.

"'Life' is such a subjective term," he protested rationally, "I have both accepted what I am and am happy with the _life_ I've built around it."

Eisley's head turned slowly, her eyes soft as downy fields of clover, with the pale coloring to match, yet piercing, boring through layers of Carlisle at degrees of understanding he nearly _felt, _gazing right through his golden orbs, through him and all his vampirism. Something about her, in that moment, transcended the typical, outside of the obvious. It wasn't just that her eyes practically bled jade green moisture, or that, underneath the monster facade, she was still a child, or even that, oddly, she didn't seem _interested_ in the subtle details of her condition. Somehow, her years of solitude had made her something other than that curious entirely. _Primal_ would be part of her nature now, but there remained a touch of the very, very _human_ ability to embrace a situation and adapt to it, the ancient, consensual desire to do more, to know more, to _be_ more. And despite that her window of opportunity for changing herself had slammed shut, Carlisle wanted desperately to give her that chance.

And to accept what she was, the unchangeable, the irrevocable.

"Eisley, you don't fit into any of the pre-decided concepts of vampirism," Carlisle put out into the open. "By nature, newly created vampires are incontrollable, inconsolable creatures that spend their first few _years_ of existence hunting, killing, and ravaging for the sake of hunger never satiated. Within minutes of the transformation they are only shadows of their former selves, they have no capacity to process anything other than the thirst."

"I _am_ thirsty," she admitted in a tone barely discernible, effectively cutting off Carlisle's rambling.

"The bear," he began, squinting. "Did she fight you off?"

"What? No," she defended. "I found her trapped, I told you."

"Then how did you avoid killing her when you fed?"

"I wasn't even going to..._feed, _but I couldn't take it anymore."

"The thirst?"

"I had a...a little blood," she coughed. "My throat is _burning_."

"But the bear is still alive."

She looked up and back down again as if stung. "Isn't that a good thing?"

"Sparing the life of any innocent creature is, by an large, a good thing, but as I said, vampires your _age_ have absolutely no restraint. Once started on a victim, they don't stop until there's nothing left to be had."

Eisley didn't respond, though her expression hardened visibly. "A few years, you said?"

"Typically," he responded carefully.

Silence. No doubt her mind was again on Caine, on Caine's victims.

"Your brother was a newborn, four years old. I find it amazing he was able to control himself around you," Carlisle offered quietly.

She nodded distantly. "So...what? I'm an exception," she shrugged.

Carlisle couldn't help but chuckle. "An exception to the rule that there are no exceptions, among other rules at that." For a moment, he considered Hamlet's bitemark, the possibility that he was an unaffected, animal carrier of the vampire toxin. Of the thousands of theories he'd formulated regarding Eisley as an anomaly, the one regarding the dog was the most practically explainable. And improbable.

"What other rules?"

Carlisle studied her suddenly interested visage a second before answering. "Not one to _follow_ rules, are you?"

"Never had to," she replied, regretfully somber again.

"Vampires," he got back on subject, "all possess abilities that are..._superhuman_: speed, strength, more acute senses of sight, hearing, taste, smell. Physically, you may have noticed, their skin reflects sunlight." He extended an arm, opening his palm up to the warmth of the sun.

"I did notice. What else?"

"I haven't had the chance to witness you exhibiting anything superhuman, but I would guess that you ran here."

"I did. Very quickly," she grinned mildly.

"In addition to that, vampires don't need to breath or eat human food, or sleep."

Eisley blanched at that concept. "Why?"

"The very _second_ vampire venom collides with blood in the veins, the victim ceases to age, to grow and change as humans would normally do. The toxin is like a preservative that destroys all traces of the fluids, stops the organs, the heart. It alone keeps the vampire alive, and the blood we drink fuels the engine."

"We've stopped aging?"

"Yes," he returned. "Your body will not change anymore, ever."

"Thought you said I was an exception."

"To _that_ rule, unlikely. It's your eyes."

"My eyes?"

"A vampires eyes are _always_, without fail, without deviation, a solid crimson, except in the case of hunger, when they become black. Newborns eyes' are _always _bright red, because of the human blood still in the system after transformation."

"Yours are gold," she muttered, cutting him off.

"Reaction to a food source," he continued, without missing a beat, "topaz eyes occur when a vampire abstains from feeding on human blood."

"You don't attack humans?"

"No. Only animals, here in the forests. My family and I sometimes call ourselves vegetarians. Kind of a joke."

Though her stony features didn't betray it, secretly, Eisley was more than relieved.

"Why did my brother kill all those people then?"

He sighed. "Animal blood isn't like human blood, isn't...enough."

"What do you mean?"

"It keeps us sane, but doesn't satisfy fully, no matter how much we drink. It has taken most of us decades to gather enough self-control to resist the smell of human blood, to leave them behind as food sources altogether. I never relished the idea of killing an innocent creature." He thought for a moment. "Eisley, how were you able to leave the bear alive?"

Eisley remained still for a few fleeting moments, running a tongue over her chapped lips, her brown furrowed in scrutinous thought. "She begged for it."

Had he been breathing, Carlisle's airflow would have hitched awkwardly upon hearing this, though he did become aware his train of thought had been violently derailed. "What?" A new vampire Ability, perchance? "She _asked_ that you not kill her?"

"No..." she mused, still trying to comprehend it herself, "not in words. A feeling."

"Fascinating."

"So how am I an exception to the rule about eyes?"

Carlisle duly noted her lack of a lengthy attention span when there were more interesting things to discuss. "What color are your eyes, naturally?"

"Green."

"A few minutes ago, they were gold, same color as mine. Bypassed the newborn red-eye stage completely," he pointed at them for emphasis. "You said you were thirsty, and I think that's because the energy you collected from the bear's blood wore off. The _exception _is in that, as that happened, I watched your eyes become green again."

Eisley scraped her bottom teeth against her upper lip, waiting for him to explain. "So...why is that?"

"Did you know that your dog had been bitten by a vampire?"

"What? Where?" Alarmed, she gave a short whistle, and Hamlet, ears perked, hopped from his perch and bounded over. Carlisle parted his fur gently at the shoulder, revealing the crescent-shaped scar.

"That's a vampire bite?" Eisley cradled the mutt's head in her lap, stroking him nervously. "I didn't know."

"You've seen this?"

"I was there when it happened."

"You saw the vampire?" Carlisle's tone was suddenly low and protective.

"No, no, we were in the forest in the park, Sewell Park, and it got dark and I lost him for a few minutes."

"But you found him?"

"He found me. Came out of the bushes, bleeding from there," she eyed the scar apprehensively, green eyes wide. "You said that... it's difficult for a vampire to stop...eating once he starts."

Carlisle nodded patiently, awaiting her arrival at the only conclusion he himself could practically draw.

"Doesn't make sense. If it was a vampire, by all reasoning, he should be dead, right? Unless... Caine, _Caine_ bit him. He was there, he was there the whole time, he was watching us," Eisley inhaled shallowly, swallowed a wad of saliva.

Hamlet gave a low whine. The wind picked up speed, whipping through the crevices in the onyx boulders, lifting the hair from the scalps of the two vampires on the highest, rocky perch.

"There are very few vampires that feed the way we do, and we spare no animals once they have been attacked, no one does. I did not understand why you were different until I analyzed his blood. Prior to now there's been very little theorizing about animalian vampires."

"You said they can't exist-"

"They can't. But they can carry, and transfer, the vampire toxin. Your brother bit your dog, but let go after a short period of time, a few seconds a most," Carlisle elaborated as Eisley listened in quiet shock. "Then your dog bit you, on the hand, and the venom was transferred again."

"But then why didn't I..._change_...when Hamlet bit me, right then?"

"Vampire toxins have no obvious effect on Hamlet's body. In conclusively say that when the venom is passed through a non-human source, it becomes diluted by the blood and other fluids of the body, weakens. He didn't have a lot to start with, but was able to transfer some to you, apparently."

"What makes you think that?"

"When he bit you, you _didn't_ transform, as you mentioned, but as I said, the very _second_ the venom makes contact with human blood, the human ceases to grow, to change. He didn't have enough to make you a full-fledged vampire, so some aspects of that character you _didn't_ take on. I can only guess that you were able to outrun the Volturi because the venom increased your stamina. After you blacked out, I treated you for injuries which you healed from very rapidly, a vampire trait. But your eyes didn't turn, and you didn't develop the immediate sense of desperate thirst common with newborns because you were infected, technically, _twice_, and that process warped your transformation."

Eisley struggled with the overload of information, rubbing the back of her neck with shaky fingers. "Volturi?"

"Long story."

"You can tell me later," she dismissed edgily. "So...Hamlet's got...venom?"

"Yes. I don't know much about how well the substance fares in a non-human host, but I've checked him over, and nothing strange has occurred, though I did find it out how calm he was throughout my treating you, and...changing you. Do you remember anything?"

"Yes," she replied hoarsely, her breath hitched in her throat. "He must have...felt...comfortable or something."

"Exactly, and why would that be?"

She shrugged helplessly.

"I didn't know, either, until a few minutes ago, when you said that you didn't kill the bear because you had a _feeling_ she was begging you not to."

"She had cubs," Eisley reasoned. "Of course she didn't want me to kill her."

"It's not the reason that's important, it's the feeling," Carlisle tapped her head with two fingers. "I'd be willing to stake my medical license that Hamlet's transfer of animal-tainted venom to you has connected you to each other, and you to all other animals in turn."

Eisley shook her head in confusion. "What?"

"I can never be sure about these things, and, granted, I've only had a few hours to consider the possibilities, but it _is _a proven fact that animals are highly instinctual creatures, very intuitive, cognizant beings with the ability to communicate with each other _inter-_species, making them different from humans. Their basic form of language is considered by us to be primitive, but to them it is universal. So much can be said by a hawk when it screeches at a rabbit, when a cat flattens its ears and puffs up its fur, when a snake curls and hisses. Without words, animals understand each other. As people we've come to comprehend the subtle gestures, but we can never have true conversations with them. Every action of theirs is only a _reaction_ to ours, communication is limited to back-and-forth gestures.

"I believe that Hamlet has brought you to his communicative level. By typical rule, the brain functions are heightened in vampire form: ability to process information increases, speech functions advance a hundredfold. There are two major lobes in the brain that control speech: frontal and parietal. Animals are largely frontal, because the parietal assists in forming sentences. If I had the technology to x-ray your brain on a cognitive level, I'd likely find an increased capacity to utilize the frontal, the primitive animal language," he finished, a satisfied look on his pale face.

Eisley was staring down at Hamlet, who'd rolled over in her lap to allow her kneading fingers to coax his shoulder muscles into submission. Noticing the silence, his deep, Prussian blue orbs rolled upwards curiously, toward the softer asparagus eyes of his young companion. "So," she started quietly, "I can speak to animals?"

"We have yet to test that. For now, it's a one-way street – apparently, they can speak to _you, _to some extent."

Eisley exhaled heavily, squeezing her eyelids shut. It was simply too much to process. Thrown into a world she never previously thought existed except in fantasy novels, and yet, still believing in every word spoken about it, was giving her a cranial whiplash.

The pair of them sat together in that screaming silence for a while. The sun seemed to admire their presence, throwing constant beams of yellow light in their direction when the bleary clouds were courteous enough to part their cottony bodies. The red flannel of Eisley's polo wrinkled gently as her body relaxed, her bloodstained hands entwined themselves on the highest curve of Hamlet's back. Carlisle ran practiced fingers along the embroidered leather of the rucksack at his side.

Eisley's soft-spoken words shattered the silence unexpectedly.

"He knew he was going to die."

Carlisle looked at her, his expression empathetically somber.

"He left because he didn't want to hurt me, but he came back because he couldn't be away. He knew he'd have to feed, and he killed all those people, because of me."

"Eisley, this isn't your fault-"

"It doesn't matter," she interrupted, gazing down at Hamlet again. "He had to have known they would come for him. All he wanted was for us to be together, that's all he _ever_ wanted."

She swallowed, turned her eyes to Carlisle. "I get it now," she gaped quietly. "I get it now."

Again, another moment of silent reverie passed, seconds ticking by horribly slow.

"He wanted you _safe_," Carlisle soothed, extending his left hand, in which was held a faded, purple notebook. "And he made sure you would be."

Eisley took the heavy chronicle, realizing again she'd had no time to flip through its contents beyond the instructions her brother had left to get her free of his pursuers. Tentative fingers pressed against the crackly, red-and-blue-lined pages, some of them water-damaged and torn.

"What now?" she whispered, her empty gaze unfeeling.

"I accept responsibility for taking your life away from you, Eisley Monahan," Carlisle responded, and her eyes flew up. He leaned over once more, squaring his shoulder blades against the wind. "And if you'll allow me to, I'll take responsibility for giving as much of it back to you as it is in my power to do."

"I don't understand," she admitted remorsefully.

"While I had you on life support in my home, my family and I learned as much as we could about you. I called the orphanage in Chicago where you and your brother used to live. I needed your medical records. I will never force you to accept any offer you would just as willingly reject – if you choose to follow your own path, it will not pain the supervisor there much to know you died on my operating table. Just understand that you have a perpetually welcome position in my home, with my family, whenever the need arises."

"You'd _adopt_ me?"

"I'll put us on the next flight to Illinois."

Eisley was stunned. This man, and this man's family (both parties she was only familiar with through the fleetingly distant memories, flashes of awareness experienced during her period of unconsciousness) was opening the doors to something far better than cardboard boxes in a dank, Seattle alley. She felt like a page off a cheesy 365-day stand-up calender of encouraging quotes. Yesterday, hardship was inevitable. Today, it was sure to pass. Tomorrow, would the clouds rolling in still have silver linings?

Eisley was at the end of her rope. Carlisle was ready and willing to cushion her fall, and the fall was sure to come, she could feel it already, the pit of her stomach sinking unpleasantly, the weight of the world and the day coming to a close, a life, more than one, ending, a fitting close to her journey, and Caine's mission – accomplished.

There would be no armistice for their one casualty, and no avoiding of danger for those left existing.

In a way, the death of everything was, for Eisley, the re-birth, the way to invigorate old bones, paralyzed chances at a better life. Caine would have wanted that for her. Perhaps he knew. Perhaps he knew everything, everything, after all.

"I'd come and live with you, and your family, in your house, here?" she processed.

"And, like them, you can live as normally as you want to. Go to school, make friends, don't ever assume that what you are now has any bearing on your potential to be anything you want."

She hesitated. "I don't even know how to be what I am now, let alone anything I want," Eisley gulped. "What if they don't like me?"

Carlisle grinned. "I'll look after you."

Eisley smiled. "A vampire."

"A friend," he corrected blissfully, offering his hand, "Eisley."

"A ticket to Chicago," she returned sportively, shaking the proffered appendage, "Carlisle."

Hamlet yipped happily.


	30. Epilogue: Chicago

_**Eisley POV**_

****Carlisle did as he promised and booked two seats on the nextmost flight to Chicago, Illinois. We touched down just after business-hour closing on a Friday evening, and spent the weekend in a grandly spruced hotel, oriented westward, toward the manually operated raising bridges, above which the purple, evening sky was populated with city lights and fireworks.

Adoption papers were signed, and my name was scratched from the orphanage roster for permanent good.

One more flight, and my new life as a Monahan-Cullen would begin in Forks, Washington, the rainiest, most wonderful place in the world to be, save one particular place I'd been dying to see.

Caine's last secret fort was more magnificent than I could have imagined.

I had always needed him more than the air I breathed, for we had been two entities coexisting alongside each other, equally supporting of the weight distributed between us. Standing alone was awkward at first, and I was unsteady, but I found my balance again beneath that bridge in Chicago, a story for another day, another time long from now, when I am ready to share with you the story of Caine Andrew Monahan in a way only _most_ of us will even partially understand.

Looking back on my short thirteen years, I can never accurately remember was life was like before it was taken from me, as it is common for humans _not_ to comprehend the subtle meanings of ideas or objects or relationships until they're dead and gone. Carlisle taught me that the two terms might have been interchangeable at some point, for that which is dead to the living is gone to the living. Not being among the living, I am dead, but so far away from gone I can't even make out its silhouette on the horizon through my airplane window.

Most importantly, even after struggling to comprehend how they could even exist, I've accepted what I am, and all that my condition entails: superhuman abilities, a dog always open for a good conversation over beef jerky, and a family.

Doesn't seem so bad when its put that way, does it?

-----

My name is Eisley Monahan, and I am a vampire.


End file.
